Perhaps the single most important issue in financial services, especially in investment management, is trust.
Trust is both very simple and very complex but it’s at the heart of what we do in this sector.
How does investment management stack up?
It’s a tricky one to answer especially at the more granular level. However in Ireland, useful work has been carried out on how people view different companies and sectors as regards overall reputation. The Reputations Agency every year prepares a reputations index. This is the largest data bank on corporate reputation in Ireland and it’s been going for the last 16 years.
While the survey covers a wide range of companies over a wide range of sectors, one of its key components, which chimes so much with what matters in financial services, is the issue of business conduct and specifically trust.
Conduct in this context, and what people responded to, is centred on ethical behaviour, openness and transparency, fair business practices – items which have been top of the agenda in financial services for decades. Does the customer hold you in high esteem and most importantly – do they trust you?
While we can’t pull out the stats on investment managers directly, we can at least get a bit of a steer on a more general basis. I’ve tried to look at a few categories within financial services and see how they rank and track how they’ve changed.
Looking at the larger banks, in aggregate they are still to the bottom end of the table though there is a bit of a gap between individual names. Their overall positioning in the reputation index is broadly similar to where it was in 2025. Improving trust and reputation cannot be achieved overnight and there are likely still legacy issues to be dealt with.
Larger integrated financial companies fare a lot better, and both this year and last year sit broadly around the half way mark in terms of how people view them. There have been some shifts within the category but I suspect there might be a geo-political angle at play.
Looking at the large accountancy firms, the overall score and positioning this year is in lock-step with where it was in 2025. The group overall is struggling to get into the top half of the survey, but two aspects stand out. Firstly, there is less of a “cluster” effect here compared to what we see in the other parts of financial services, where broadly similar companies get similar rankings. Amongst the accountancy names there can be a wide range in how people regard them. Also it is possible for a company to “outrun” its sector. While the overall group reputation score and rank are basically unchanged, one of the firms has managed to jump 40 places up the league table in the 12 months!
In the financial services sector, trust is vital, but can be hard to build up and even harder to retain. Financial service companies often struggle to gain trust. Surveys from IPSOS and Edelman show that this is a constant challenge in many countries.
In this context, the consistent high trust performance in Ireland of Credit Unions is an outstanding outcome. This is an example of how an enterprise can consistently gain and build trust, which in turn is allowing it to expand its customer offering.
Tradewinds 