Where is Dave Fishwick now?

Dave Fishwick is back on Netflix in Bank of Dave 2: The Loan Ranger, the sequel to the hit British movie from 2023.

The first movie told the story of how the self-made millionaire who fought to set up a community bank to help his local community in Burnley, and now the sequel shows how Dave went after payday loan companies.

As with the first movie, Bank of Dave 2 is a “true(ish) story” with creative licence being used, so it might leave you wondering where the real Dave Fishwick is now and what he’s been up to.

And that’s where we come in.

rory kinnear, bank of dave 2 the lone ranger

Netflix

Where is Dave Fishwick now?

The first movie saw Dave set up his own bank after securing the first banking licence to be issued in 150 years. However, in real life, that’s not strictly true as it’s not really called the Bank of Dave.

Officially, it’s Burnley Savings and Loans and Dave is still on a mission to become a UK regulated bank. Speaking to The Guardian in 2012, he claimed that a City expert told him that “if I use the word deposit or say I’m a bank then I will go to prison”.

So instead he officially runs an independent lending company and customers can only deposit a limited amount. But Dave has still done incredible work for the community, lending over £30 million pounds to local businesses and families and, like we saw in the first movie, all profits are still donated to local charities.

The inspiration behind the ‘bank’ is the same as we see Dave explain in the movie. Following the 2008 financial crisis, Dave helped out his customers by lending out his own money after banks started to decline them.

dave fishwick, bank of dave 2 premiere

Shirlaine Forrest//Getty Images

It eventually led to the idea to start up a community bank, despite the challenges. “The world and his wife were telling me I couldn’t be a bank if I didn’t have a banking licence, that preserve of the stinking rich and the banking elite. I was determined to show that I could,” he said in his book (via The Guardian).

Burnley Savings and Loans officially opened in September 2011 with a “Bank on Dave!” slogan and its official name tucked away in the window. It operates on a peer-to-peer crowdfunding model where savings are lent to a borrower, who then becomes responsible for the paying of the loans.

Bank of Dave 2: The Loan Ranger sees Dave go after payday loan companies after people kept coming to him with help for loans that were spiralling out of control due to huge interest rates.

In real life, Dave’s campaigning helped to lead the UK government introducing regulations on the payday loan industry, with several major payday loan companies – including Wonga – shutting down.

But it’s an industry that Dave continues to campaign against to this day. “With Netflix, we’ve got this huge big light that we can shine on this industry and say, ‘This is wrong, this needs change’,” he said on This Morning in January 2025.

“I helped get Wonga shut down, we helped change the law, but these payday loan people, they’re still there.”

“These are bad people, they’re the worst of the worst, but what this does is it allows us to shine this magnificent torch called Netflix on the top of this problem of 54 banks closing every month, meaning that there’s no access to cash for people, there’s 15,000 cash machines free to use gone,” he added to RadioTimes.com.

“So it’s the rise and rise of the loan shark… and I’m going to see if I can get as many as I can shut down.”

Dave is also still fighting for his ‘bank’ to become a UK regulated bank and for his idea of a community bank to spread across the country.

Bank of Dave and Bank of Dave 2: The Loan Ranger are available to watch now on Netflix.

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Movies Editor, Digital Spy  Ian has more than 10 years of movies journalism experience as a writer and editor.  Starting out as an intern at trade bible Screen International, he was promoted to report and analyse UK box-office results, as well as carving his own niche with horror movies, attending genre festivals around the world.   After moving to Digital Spy, initially as a TV writer, he was nominated for New Digital Talent of the Year at the PPA Digital Awards. He became Movies Editor in 2019, in which role he has interviewed 100s of stars, including Chris Hemsworth, Florence Pugh, Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba and Olivia Colman, become a human encyclopedia for Marvel and appeared as an expert guest on BBC News and on-stage at MCM Comic-Con. Where he can, he continues to push his horror agenda – whether his editor likes it or not.
 

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