David Fishwick

David Fishwick
Born	March 1971 (age 53) Nelson
Occupations	Businessperson Media personality

David Fishwick (born March 1971) is an English businessman. Born in Nelson in Lancashire, he left school at sixteen with no qualifications, before opening David Fishwick Minibus Sales in Colne and becoming the biggest minibus supplier in Britain. After finding that big banks were no longer willing to lend his customers money following the 2007–2008 financial crisis, he opened Burnley Savings and Loans, which used the advertising slogan "Bank on Dave". His efforts were documented in the Channel 4 series Bank of Dave and the semi-autobiographical 2023 film Bank of Dave. He would later present several series for Channel 4 including How to Get Rich Quick.

Life and career

"I went around all the garages and I found one that had some old part exchanges and I said, “Could I take that old part exchange away? I’ll clean it up. I’ll scrub it off. I’ll sell it. I’ll advertise it and I’ll bring you back an agreed amount of money, and the difference is mine. I eventually found a garage that agreed, and I agreed to give them £70 for this [Vauxhall] Cavalier when I sold it. I took it away, scrubbed it up, sold it for £97 so I made £27 profit. I repeated that process to the point where I could negotiate a better deal and could pay upfront, and that’s how it started."

Fishwick speaking to The Daily Telegraph in February 2023

Fishwick was born in March 1971, and grew up in a poor family on John Street in Nelson, Lancashire. He left school at sixteen with no qualifications, and took a Youth Training Scheme course at a construction site. Finding that he was unable to afford a chip butty for lunch, he went from garage to garage asking if he could have a part-exchanged car to restore and sell in exchange for some of the profits; he eventually used the proceeds to open his own garage in Nelson. He later opened David Fishwick Minibus Sales in Colne and became the biggest minibus supplier in Britain.

In 2008, after the 2007–2008 financial crisis, Fishwick found that big banks were no longer willing to lend his customers money, posing an existential threat to his business; after lending his own money on his own terms, and after no borrowers defaulted on their payments during the first six months, he looked into setting up a bank himself, where he discovered that although obtaining a consumer credit license was simple enough, obtaining a deposit-taking license required a minimum of £10,000,000 to be kept in reserve under Financial Conduct Authority regulations. He later opened Burnley Savings and Loans in September 2011 in that town centre's Keirby Walk using a peer-to-peer crowdfunding model, with "Bank on Dave" emblazoned on the front of the shop as an advertising slogan. His efforts were immortalised in the Channel 4 series Bank of Dave and in the semi-autobiographical 2023 film Bank of Dave.

In 2013, he appeared on The Secret Millions, in which he and a group of teenagers who had suffered challenging upbringings such as homelessness or addiction attempted to open a employment agency. The following year, after finding that young people were coming to him after falling into a spiral of debt after getting involved with payday loan firms and that said firms were lending to people who were underage, mentally ill, and even drunk, he fronted Dave: Loan Ranger, in which he took on their debts himself. In 2015, he co-presented the consumer series Shoppers Guide to Saving Money with Kate Quilton, and in July 2017, it was announced that he would film a six-part series for Channel 4 called How to Get Rich Quick. Upon broadcast in July 2018, Peter Crawley of The Irish Times wrote that the show "encourages people of modest means to pursue equally modest dreams in the very modest hopes, several weeks of hard work later, of doubling their modest investments".