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Top Tips for being an effective leader in financial services: Inspiring change
FS Focus assesses the pressures and potential of being a responsible leader in financial services and why it’s important.
But instead of seeing this added responsibility as a burden and negative, it is important for current and potential executives to understand and appreciate the huge benefits of an ethical, sustainable, fair and transparent approach. Customers are demanding it.
Three-quarters of consumers today say they won’t buy from unethical companies, while 86% say they’re more loyal to ethical companies, according to the 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer. This is particularly the case for the ‘next generation’, which businesses are desperate to appeal to with their products, and recruit into their organisations. Indeed, 94% of Generation Z think companies should address critical ethical and environmental issues, and 70% of millennials studied in a Deloitte report listed their company’s commitment to the community as an influence on their decision to work there. Part of the problem is transforming the long-held cultures and ways of working of the past, such as bonus structures at banks. “These are key indicators of what banks are looking for and what drives them,” says Grahame Broadbelt, global head of communications, research and development at Impact International. “If they keep paying them, despite unethical or underhand practices remaining, we’re not going to see change. There needs to be a total overhaul and realignment of how firms go to market and compensate their people.”