What is the Prize?

It is a competition which invites young professionals familiar with finance to submit innovative ideas encouraging ethics and integrity. We ask them to write a paper, in English or French, setting out their perception of how to strengthen ethical behaviour. This could be in relation to banking, insurance, accounting, micro finance and all aspects of socially responsible investment. With the limited finding available to us at present, we offer USD 20,000 for the best paper.

What inspired the Prize?

My son Robin was a young investment banker who believed in promoting robust ethical standards. He told me that he wanted to create some kind of foundation to promote greater awareness of ethics and integrity among young people; he was convinced that a commitment to honesty, trust and ethics was fundamentally important. Sadly, he died, aged thirty one, before he could turn his vision into reality. Following his untimely death, we, his family, decided to implement his ideas in the most practical way that we could. Together with the Observatoire de la Finance, a not for profit foundation based in Geneva, we have turned tragedy into the inspiration for the Robin Cosgrove Prize.

When did you start?

The inaugural Robin Cosgrove Prize was launched in September, 2006 and awarded in September 2007. An international jury evaluated the best submissions and nominated the seven best papers by consensus. The standard was so high that the Prize was shared equally between two outstanding candidates: Miss Clare Payne, working in Macquarie Bank, Sydney, Australia and Mr. Jonathan Wisebrod, working in Villari, a finance boutique in Singapore. In addition, a special Prize for ethics and micro finance was awarded to Miss Rania Abdul Rahim Moussa, from Egypt, who was studying accounting at Birmingham University, England.

What's next?

The second edition of the Robin Cosgrove Prize will be launched in mid-June. We decided to repeat the theme - Innovative Ideas for Ethics in Finance. Once again, it is a competition, welcoming papers in English or French from young people, aged thirty five or younger, based anywhere in the world.

What do you expect from them?

Any young person interested in the Prize needs to look at the website and I'm hoping for some genuinely interesting papers that would reflect Robin's convictions of the relevance of ethics, not just to finance but the knock on effect in promoting sustainability and reducing poverty. You know, he used to say: "You are an international economist, you've seen the reality in many developing countries. How can we expect people to save and invest if they cannot trust their banks? How can we expect development if corruption eats into all aspects of their lives?" His answer was that we have to focus on the younger generation and encourage much greater awareness of honesty and ethics, because it is the right thing to do.

Where do you see this leading?

Robin dreamt of creating a foundation with substantial resources, capable of undertaking large scale training and awareness-raising campaigns. We have had to start on a much smaller scale; the Prize is a first step in promoting awareness of the need for ethical behaviour in finance, whether in the private or public sector. Just this year we have seen the appalling crisis that has swept through financial organisations; Northern Rock in England and Bear Stearns in the USA come to mind. Robin was right. Modern finance rests on trust. Around the globe, ethics and integrity have no passport; they are essential to the successful functioning of the global economy as we know it. In the longer term we are dedicated to raising more substantial resources to enable us to make the Prize part of a larger vision, aimed at supporting emerging markets to achieve higher standards. We feel that this is what Robin had in mind as a way of liberating the younger generation from corruption and channelling their creative energy to build a better world.