E158 Mark Clayton

Most banks talk about values. Very few are willing to let those values shape decisions.

Mark Clayton, CEO of Triodos Bank UK, leads a bank that treats impact as a discipline, not a slogan. Having worked at the heart of big finance, he understands how neutrality, risk, and growth are used to avoid responsibility — and what it takes to do things differently.

This conversation goes inside the real trade-offs of values-led banking: how credit decisions are made, why nature-based solutions challenge traditional finance, what ethical AI governance actually looks like, and how leadership changes when impact isn’t optional.

This isn’t a story about fixing banking with better narratives. It’s about what happens when values are allowed to drive the system.