Designing for Digital Trust in Financial Services

The financial services industry is facing a crisis in trust. In order to avoid seeing massive customer defection from incumbent players, firms need to learn how to start systematically rebuilding trusted relationships. frog is excited to welcome a dynamic panel of innovation experts from across the fin-tech ecosystem to discuss the pressing issue: How do we design for digital trust?

Ahead of our event, we asked a few of our panelists how they think trust has changed in the digital age:

“Trust in the digital age is all about personalization, client empathy, and following through on aligned expectations. It’s about how we translate client engagement and user activation to the human/machine interface. So the question is, how do we—as providers—scale that personalization, while also maintaining quality and credibility?”

Lisha Davis,Head of Innovation Studio, Vanguard 

“Trust is a very human thing that has not changed much— you trust people you know, that you interact with, that you touch or feel in genuine ways. Digital has made that all abstract. We have to look to the foundations of physical trust in order to translate that into digital trust. Since the beginning of time, trust has been about a person in front of you building credibility. Today, banks must find new ways to build that credibility with consumers and vice versa.”

Alex Sion,Co-Head of D10X, Citi Ventures, Citi

“Only a few decades ago, most consumers would enter the physical location of a community bank, interact directly with another human being, and use paper money or checks to carry a small number of basic transactions—deposit money, withdraw money, take or repay a loan. In today’s digital economy, almost all of consumer finance is dependent upon on data and third-party relationships that are invisible to the consumer. While these changes have brought great efficiency gains and numerous innovations, this architecture has diminished transparency, accountability, and trust.”

Garry Reeder, VP, Policy and Innovation, CFSI