It will be interesting to see whether the deterioration endures. It will also be intriguing to see whether brokers and advisers find ways to halt and reverse it – or whether they feel compelled to muster any sort of meaningful response.
After all, although we know from related studies that some have taken trust to a completely different level, many advisers have historically been content simply to sit on top of a pretty unimpressive pile in which the majority of providers even now earn negative scores.
Complacency and inertia have their inherent attractions, but it is hard to make a case for them being in the spirit of putting customers’ interests first.
The unfortunate truth, as several years of data have illustrated, is that across the whole spectrum of providers there persists a disappointing and often damaging reliance on edicts from above – RDR being an obvious example – and an unshakable faith in consumer indifference.
As advisers might now be discovering, these are assumptions that can prove perilously misguided over the longer term.
James Devlin is a professor at Nottingham University Business School and director of its Centre for Risk, Banking and Financial Services, which produces the Trust and Fairness Index
TRUST AND FAIRNESS INDEX: WHAT IS IT?
Levels of trust
Base level trust – a belief about firms as to their competence, honesty, reliability and dependability: Will it do what it says on the tin?
Higher level trust – degree of emotional connection between customers and firms: Can I trust them to act in my best interests?
The trust index – a combined measure of base and higher level trust.
Trustworthiness – based on the image and reputation of financial institutions.
System trust - the extent to which consumers believe that the regulatory environment and business system provides adequate protection for them.
Source: Trust and Fairness Index, Nottingham University Business School
SURVEY FINDINGS: TRUST RATINGS AND INSTITUTIONS
Ratings of trust in the financial services sector continue their path of gradual improvement. The good news for the sector is that overall ratings of trust are now higher than at any point during the period covered by the current online data collection approach (since 2009).
This development will, no doubt, be roundly welcomed by the sector. However, the overall rating has not quite broken into positive territory, so while promising the findings from the data are not a ringing endorsement of the sector.
Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, brokers and advisers have been knocked off the number one spot by building societies for overall ratings of trust. In previous surveys, their lead appeared practically unassailable, but in the current wave the gap with other types of provider has also narrowed.
