Maybe the experience doesn’t matter (that much)

by. Ron Shevlin

EY (is it not called Ernst & Young anymore?) released its 2014 Global Consumer Banking Survey recently. For a better review of it than I’ll provide here, see the summary on The Financial Brand, or download the report directly.

The report goes to some lengths to establish the connection between the level of trust consumers have in their banks and their intentions to refer their banks, as well as to open new accounts.

No argument from me. (Well, not about the correlation or even causal relationship between trust and strength of relationship, that is. As for intention to refer, c’mon people. It’s 2014–it’s time to stop asking consumers about their intentions to refer, and to start tracking their actual referral behavior. You don’t pay your salespeople on prospects’ intentions to buy your products and services, do you?)

According to the EY study, 44% of consumers have “complete trust” in their primary financial services provider (the vast majority of whom are banks). What caught my attention were the reasons why consumers who have “complete trust” do so:

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