It has become a truism that trust in the financial services sector has never been lower, and that the financial crisis has shredded whatever credibility that the industry had. Mintel has two issues with this suggestion. Firstly, it tends to be based on opinion, rather than fact. Secondly, it presupposes that there was any trust to lose. Some commentators claim that people have never really trusted the financial services sector. They’d argue that the idea that there was a golden era when the bank manager was a pillar of the community and a watchword for integrity is based more on nostalgia and wishful thinking than on fact.

Mintel’s research for this report shows that consumers’ concept of “trust” is far too nuanced to be reduced to a simplistic trust/distrust dichotomy. People have different levels of trust in different elements of the financial services industry, and they have different levels of trust in the different roles that they expect the industry to carry out. Trusting someone to process a direct debit efficiently is very different to trusting them to give you impartial advice on complex financial issues.

This report examines the different elements of trust, first putting the financial services industry in a wider context and then drilling down to examine consumers’ trust in different elements of the industry. It then looks at what people trust banks to do well, and where they are more suspicious. A comparison between the mutual sector and the shareholder-owned banking sector is included, attempting to either prove or disprove the frequently repeated claim that people trust building societies more than banks. Finally, Mintel looks at whether trust actually matters: whether people’s trust in their bank has any real bearing on their satisfaction or loyalty.