No, insist British banker Neil Berry. With his company he wants to “bring cultures together.”

Neil Berry, 40, freely admits that there are a lot of businesses in Oulu offering English-language training and proof-reading to companies. ‘The proof-reading market has a plentiful supply’ says Neil. So what is Neil Berry, the founder of LCB (Language, Business, Culture) Solutions, doing that is remotely original?

‘I aim to bring cultures together,’ he tells 65DN. ‘I can offer proof-reading but also, with my background as a risk manager in banking, I can offer professional development, risk management, project management . . . I use the skills that I’ve developed in twenty years in banking and apply them to meet the client’s needs.’

Originally from Epsom, just outside London, Neil left school and soon got a job working in a bank. Until the Credit Crunch in the autumn of 2008, he worked in Leeds, northern England, for the Halifax (later known as HBOS), eventually studying for a degree at the UK’s Open University.  It is from this experience that he believes he can offer something ‘unique’, meaning, he hopes, that LCB Solutions stands out in the crowd.

‘I don’t just do the typical language training role of offering a course that takes place however many times a week,’ he says. ‘Language Development Training is much more effective if I actually become part of a project that the company is working on.’ And then, he says, companies receive not only the benefit of his language training but also his other skills in project management and the financial sector.

‘I want to offer my skills to small companies – of between 5 and 10 employees – who may not normally have the time or finances for professional development,’ Neil explains. In particular, he wants to run workshops in which he ‘brings five or six companies together at the same time’. Something which, he tells me, makes the whole package considerably cheaper for each of the companies concerned.

Risk Management is the area that Neil is extensively trained in . . . and he certainly seems to be adept at taking risks. When he, his wife and two sons arrived in Oulu a year ago they had no work, no home, no family connections and couldn’t speak much Finnish at all.

This thoroughly risky chain of events was set in motion by the Financial Crisis, in which Neil took voluntary redundancy.

‘We’d been holidaying in Lapland in the winter for about four years and we really liked it,’ he recalls. ‘We decided to see what it was like in the summer as well and we even bought a cabin. Every holiday we’d try and get to Finland.’

Then, having accepted redundancy, ‘I thought to myself, what do I want to be doing for the next twenty years . . . until I retire? It’s time to do something completely different.’

The redundancy seems to have made Neil re-evaluate his life. ‘I thought, we both do quite typical jobs. I worked for a bank, my wife was a teacher . . . this is an opportunity to do something really different . . . to expand to another culture, learn another language . . . if you don’t give it a go then you will never know!’ he enthuses.

His wife and kids agreed and so they began to plan to move to Finland. They were particularly enthusiastic about Lapland, ‘but we chose Oulu,’ says Neil, ‘because it was the furthest north city that had an International School and this was really important to the kids. We also recognised that it would be much more difficult to find work in Lapland.’

‘I’m normally risk averse!’ laughs Neil. ‘But we had enough money to last us eighteen months. The worst thing that could have happened is that neither of us found work and we went home.’

But it did not come to the worst. Neil’s wife got a job teaching at the International School and Neil has begun setting up LCB Solutions.

Neil also seems to have a very strong faith that things will go right. He and his wife met through the Elim Pentecostal Church, they attend the Pentecostal Church in Oulu and he tells me that, ‘I always had the faith that, no matter what, God was going to support us.’

And this is another way in which Neil’s business is rather different from some others.

‘I believe very firmly that businesses should give something back to society,’ he insists. ‘In everything I do, I try to give back ten percent.’

This ‘tithing’ is a tradition whereby Christians give ten percent of their income to the church. Neil and his wife’s ‘tithing’ includes running free English-language classes for anyone, based at the Pentecostal Church.

‘We have had Russians, Somalis, Iraqis and Finns,’ he says. ‘In fact that’s where I’ve just come from. I believe that if all businesses give something back, then a lot of the challenges we have in the world could be addressed.’