A Study on trust restoration efforts in the UK retail banking industry

Abstract

This paper aims to capture the perception of banking services providers on how to restore their customers’ trust in the UK banking industry. Twenty frontline employees (FLEs) who have customer-facing responsibilities are interviewed and a thematic analysis of the interview transcripts is undertaken. Through the emergence of three different major themes and a number of sub-themes, we have presented our findings in the form of a trust restoration model. Interviewees have reported three major themes as an action framework to restore their customers’ trust. Firstly, banks are implementing enhanced transparency in their operations, by appropriately disclosing the key features of their lending and other banking activities. Secondly, they are implementing policies and procedures that can help strengthen their relationship banking, such as improving employee and customer engagement activities for supporting small businesses and the community. Thirdly, they are promoting operational efficiency by adequately investing in information technology infrastructure. However, some financial service practices identified by the interviewees, for example, the deliberate sale of financial products that are unsuitable for their customers or too complex to understand, still continues. Ultimately, this ‘sale before service’ tactic is incompatible with the industry claims of compliance with the new financial regulations.