After an extensive search of the public domain, there was no information regarding the most trusted financial service providers in Europe. ING-Diba, Germany & Europe Assistance, France offer customers personalized information and innovations to ease their financial decisions while securing their financial identity. Deutsche Bank and Bank of England are the least trusted by the consumer because they ignored risks of breach of consumer information, lacked transparency or demonstrated inequality while attending consumer and employee needs
CONSUMER TRUST — FINANCIAL SERVICES
- According to the Consumer International Organization, the global financial crisis prompted a collapse of consumer trust in the banking system. It also prompted regulatory responses that increased capital requirements and steps to reshape the structure of banks, to minimize the risk of a repeat crisis in years to come
- In Europe, financial service providers like banks and insurance companies are the least trusted industry with 57% UK's, 23% Spain, 35% Denmark, 37% France, 45% Poland, and 22% in Italy.
- Average consumer trust in the financial service industry in Europe countries was 35% in 2018.
- According to the report by Instantly Brand Monitor in 2015, consumer trust in bank brands relative to tech firms found that the financial services offered by PayPal, Google, and Apple enjoy high levels of trust comparable with the largest banks.
- According to 2017/19 report, Edelman Trust Barometer Financial services are the least trusted of all other industries but has continued to experience continued growth in the period 2012 – 2019.
- In 2019, consumer trust in financial services stood at 57% but still the least trusted industry that varies across the mass population and informed public.
- In 2017, consumer trust in financial services stood at 54% and grew by 11% in the global market; 35% in Germany and the UK 45% trust remains a minority sentiment.
- Traditional banks remain the most trusted institution to create and maintain the best solution to financial onboarding woes because they utilize reusable digital identity schemes.
- According to Accenture report, trust in banks and insurers is high where 78% of respondents in their survey said they trust their bank to look after their long-term financial well-being, while 68% trust their insurer to do the same.
- According to a survey carried out by Significant on adults from Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, the UK, and Sweden about their digital on-boarding experience with retail bank accounts, credit cards, and insurance — 44% of consumers trust banks to manage their digital identity, 25% stands at Government schemes, while retailers and social media platforms aren’t trusted as at all, only chosen by 3% and 2% of respondents respectively.
- Consumers do not trust banks for financial services offered by fin-tech companies.
- According to Bain company’s survey of 151,894 consumers in 29 countries; 54% of respondents trust at least one tech company more than banks in general and 29% trust at least one tech company more than their primary bank.
- According to a research survey by Brand Finance, NG-DiBa is Germany’s most trusted bank with customer consent for trustworthiness standing at 80.8% and 75.0% of the market because they offer direct banking without branches and with a limited number of consumer offer.
- ING-Diba has approximately 9 million customers in Germany.
- Deutsche Bank is the least trusted major bank with only 46.8% customer rating on integrity and trustworthiness.
- Volksbank and Sparkasse, Commerzbank stand at 67.8%, 63.9%, and 53.8% respectively.
- According to Brand Finance, public banks are less trusted than private banks because they are more localized and have more cooperate complexity to attend to their customer's needs.
- Europe Assistance is the most trusted brand in the finance service industry in France, with a rating of 71%.
- Europe Assistance is most trusted for the way they assist and support over 300 million customers in times of stress, responding to their need on time, and support during their daily lives achieved with the commitment of their employees.
- Europe Assistance also align technological advances with evolving customer expectation and generation of personalized and innovative services that meet the new needs and uses of customers.
BUILDING CUNSUMER TRUST AMONG FINANCIAL SERVICE PROVIDERS
- According to Elderman's trust survey 2019, tech-innovations are taking the lead to gain consumer trust.
- Digital transformation aligned to protecting data and assets, fairer access to credit, financial inclusion for the bank, and digital gamification to advance financial literacy drive higher consumer trust.
- About 53% of consumers trust digital transformation that allows integration of access to financial services and aspects of a customer’s financial life.
- According to the manager, Santander Consumer Bank, it is significantly easier to win a client who uses BankID rather than other forms of ID. From our experience, 7 out of 10 car loan applicants complete their applications when using BankID, as opposed to 2 out of 10 normally.
- Consumers no longer want to deal with application processes that are long and frustrating to complete. Digital identity is sure to play a critical role — but banks must implement changes more quickly than they have been.
- East Africa Fintech apps like Mpesa and TIGO Insurance in conjunction with banking institutions are increasing consumer trust through effective supervision — digitally managed and enhancing financial inclusion.
- Finance service providers build trust through internal innovation, self-disruption, and capitalizing on their advantages.
LOSING CONSUMER TRUST FINANCIAL SERVICE PROVIDERS
- Globally, the most important social issue influencing consumer trust is income inequality and financial security.
- However, digital innovation targeting trust amongst these issues are lagging far behind traditional products and services.
- Financial service providers lose consumer because they ignore the risks of a breach of trust, increased cost, and lack of competitive prices or when the customer does not feel valued by not getting products that suit their needs or when they feel that they complaints are not taken seriously.
- According to Edelman 2019, 78% of consumers believe how a company treats its employees is one of the best indicators of its trustworthiness.
- The public relies on employer and employee relationship for guidance during turbulent times.
- Employees of financial services companies trust their employer to do the right thing more than employees of other sectors.
- Edelman concluded that financial service providers who trust their employees are far more likely to advocate on their behalf, stay loyal, be engaged and live your organization’s values, and be strongly committed to their job and the customers they serve which enhances consumer trust.
- Banks that were recorded to have lost their consumer trusts are Wells Fargo provided little transparency into what caused so many accounts to be opened without customer approval — ex-employees attributed many of the problems to a cutthroat culture.
- Bank of England consumers lost trust in the banking entity and bankers after the crash of 2008.
- Deutsche Bank demonstrated a good way of losing trust amongst its employees.
Research Strategy:
After an extensive search of the public domain, there was no information regarding the most trusted financial service providers in Europe. We could not find information about companies serving in the whole of Europe. Instead, we located a few highlights about some of such providers in Europe countries like Germany, France, and the United Kingdom and used it as a proxy for the Europe market. Due to the lack of information, we could not determine a criterion for determining the most or the least.
We leveraged financial industry reports about the consumer sentiments with specific concern for European countries. Unfortunately, none of this information was available on any publication or financial journals, not even Statista or KPMG or MarketsResearch. Instead, those resources provided general information about consumer trust in all industries in Europe. We included this information in our findings because we believed it would be useful to provide information about how and what least or most trusted companies do.
Next, we scoured publications focused on consumer sentiments, reviews, and complains. However, there was little information regarding financial information and Europe based sentiments. Nonetheless, we found the Edelman Trust Barometer and navigated to trust around financial services, but they too did not provide information specific to Europe and specific companies.
We went further to leveraged research websites like Google Scholar, ResearchGate, Academia.Edu, and Mendeley; white papers, and specialist reviews like BrandFinance and Ey.com. Fortunately, we found two case studies/survey reports by BrandFinance and OpinionWays containing relevant information about consumer rating in Germany and France respectively. BrandsFinance mentioned best and worst brands in Germany Banking sector whereas OpinionWays mentioned best-trusted France. However, we could not locate the least trusted in France.
Those were only two banks as compared to the required 4-6 most and least trusted in Europe. So, in our last strategy, we sought to peruse news websites, articles, and reviews concerning consumer sentiment aligned to the financial industry. Here, we discovered some articles and consumer sentiment information about trust in finance. However, none of them provided a scale or ratio of trust by consumers of those companies. More so, some of those companies differed in the level of trust according to traditional banking service provides versus fin-tech companies.