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M AG P I E 04
A N E W ANATOMY O F T R U S T Hannah Conway reports.
At the heart of financial services is trust, something which collapsed after the catastrophic events of 2008. And yet the industry didn’t change in the way people were expecting. Can technology-driven new entrants to the sector finally begin to repair the confidence that the public needs to have in it?
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1 — prnewswire.com/news-releases/ survey-despite-privacy-concernsconsumers-will-share-personal-data-if-itsaves-money-or-resolves-customer-serviceissues-300440038.html
en years after the near collapse of the global financial system and the subsequent ‘Great Recession,’ it has become apparent that there is still an ongoing crisis of ‘trust,’ especially in the Western world. Whether it is financial services, wider business, government or journalism, there are record levels of distrust across almost every major institution that underpins society. Not for nothing did Dictionary. com name “misinformation” as its word of 2018 – not just a reflection of the ‘fake news’ phenomenon, but also of the general wariness that many people feel about the news, data and stories they’re receiving and consuming.
Yet many of the biggest companies that have emerged since 2008 rely deeply on trust. In today’s world, people allow strangers to inhabit their homes, drive their cars, even walk their dogs. And not only do we trust strangers, we also appear to be relatively happy to trust faceless computers, and willing to share our most personal information with them online. A 2017 study by YouGov reported that 48% of millennials feel comfortable sharing their data with companies that they do business with, as long as it leads to cost savings – the highest percentage of any generation surveyed.1
