The renowned group built a system that is based on trust, and when the story is stripped down to essentials, the lessons resonate for financial industry professionals in the 21st century.

Forget the Da Vinci Code and the "zombie apocalypse" of internet conspiracy theories. If you want to understand the legacy of the Knights Templar, stop looking for the Holy Grail and start looking at your Bloomberg terminal.

In the latest Basis Point interview, Sherif Mamdouh sits down with Steve Tibble – a man who uniquely bridges two worlds as both a world-class medieval historian and a veteran of private equity communications. Tibble argues that while we view the 12th century as a distant era of chainmail and castles, the Templars were actually the "professional services elite" of their day.

"There are a lot of resonating points of contact between the Templars and modern private equity," Tibble notes, highlighting a "strange connectivity" in how these organisations operate. Beyond being elite warriors, the Templars functioned as Europe’s first sophisticated cross-border financial network. They weren't just fighting; they were facilitating long-distance capital transfers and issuing early promissory notes in an age of fragmented institutions. Through this complex architecture of financial leverage, diplomacy and raw might, they managed an impressive 200-year run of infrastructure development, military defence and soft power.

Tibble describes them as the "James Bonds" of the medieval world – men who signed up for a life of celibacy, austerity, and danger to join an intellectual and "muscular" internationalist force. They were a 12th-century hybrid of the World Bank, the UN, and a peacekeeping force. Strip away the myths of devil worship, and you find a group whose operations were "entirely rational" and strategically sophisticated.

In a world of fragile logistics, the Templars built a system on the most valuable currency of all: trust. It turns out, that the foundations of modern finance weren't built in a boardroom, but on the road to Jerusalem.

View the interview here: