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WHY CULTURE MATTERS | Restoring Trust and Renewing Banks’ “Social License”

WHY CULTURE MATTERS | Restoring Trust and Renewing Banks’ “Social License”

by Starling Insights

Starling Insights Editorial Board

Apr 10, 2018

Compendium

In 2009, Stephen Green, then-Chairman of HSBC, penned his early reflections on the unfolding cataclysm that only later came to be called the global financial crisis. “There has been a massive breakdown of trust: trust in the financial system, trust in bankers, trust in business, trust in business leaders, trust in politicians, trust in the media, trust in the whole process of globalization – all have been severely damaged, in rich countries and in poor countries alike.”1 

The financial crisis intensified an already steep decline of public trust in the financial industry. Among the general public, there was a clear sense that bank profit-taking had come at the expense of shareholders and society. This sentiment was reinforced by the fact that, while the destructive force of the financial crisis had rippled through the real economy, there were virtually no financial or public leaders jailed or held personally accountable for the crisis while taxpayers footed the bill for bankers’ perceived transgressions. A decade on from the events, there remains a widespread belief that bankers played – and continue to play – a game of “heads I win, tails everyone else loses.” 

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