THE LEADER of Scotland's financial services industry has called for a new collaboration between Scottish business and academe to prevent a repeat of the systemic failure of the global credit system that helped destroy 90% of the value of Scotland's two biggest companies last year.

In his first interview since the banking crisis of last autumn, which saw the UK government take a 58% stake in RBS and expedite a takeover of HBOS by Lloyds TSB, John Campbell, chairman of Scottish Financial Enterprise, called for a "new form of research facility to challenge and test the global financial market model to determine potential risks to the global system".

Campbell, who is also deputy to chairman Alex Salmond on the Scottish government's financial services advisory board (FiSAB), told the Sunday Herald he would be discussing with colleagues over the next few months a committee to "wargame" possible threats to Scotland's financial stability, adding that "this could be a research programme of industry to a range of industry stakeholders".

Referring to the training for his own earlier career as an army officer, Campbell said: "We need to think about other scenarios in future and work these through so that government and regulators can stress-test them, and make us better prepared for other scenarios in the future."

"Rather than looking retrospectively we should look forward, and create an environment within an academic institution... to bring together a financial services laboratory where we could mix the chemicals' on a test bench and see what happens. We need to be better prepared, and for the military as for the fire service, it's all about practice, practice, practice."

SFE revealed that it has already had "early discussions" with the University of Edinburgh's School of Informatics, home of one of the world's most powerful computers outside of the US, and the only computer science department in the UK to achieve 5*A in the government's research ratings.

Campbell said that SFE, whose members include a cross-section of Scotland's banking, insurance, asset servicing, investment management and corporate finance sectors, had asked the department to collaborate. "There is potential for the industry to work with the school in areas like risk management and modelling investment decisions. We will take forward the discussion on this in 2009," he said.

SFE is already working with the Fraser of Allander Institute at the University of Strathclyde to offer an independent assessment of the state of the industry in Scotland.

In his interview for the Sunday Herald, Campbell rebutted the notion that the presence of the Scottish banks among the biggest victims of the credit crisis had tainted the Scottish financial "brand values" of prudence and probity, cultivated over centuries and adopted as a means of gaining competitive advantage by successive devolved Scottish administrations.

While being careful to put the travails of the Scottish banks - both of which are leading members of SFE - in the context of the global credit crunch, Campbell went further than he or any Scottish banker had previously gone in accepting responsibility for Scottish banking's part in provoking the crisis.

"I don't believe that somehow this all just happened to us and our industry with no responsibility on our part," he said. "Along with those who are charged with regulating our industry and those politicians who influence, we need to learn from recent events, and show humility. I believe that, but I am equally clear that the industry is committed to learning the lessons. These include transparency in product development, and ensuring that everyone is very clear about the constituents of the products they are designing, and that institutions have absolute clarity about the make-up of instruments they are buying."

Jack Perry, chief executive of Scottish Enterprise and a member of FiSAB, said: "Working effectively with academia and industry is important in both helping to stimulate innovation and create competitive advantage for companies, as well as ensuring the sector can continue to be successful on the global stage.

"Initiatives such as this could also help to exploit the technology capabilities within Scotland which help create new business models for financial services companies and are vitally important in ensuring the future success of the sector."