You would be hard pressed to find a leadership team that wouldn’t say maintaining trust with consumers is a top strategic priority in its decision-making.
Since the financial crisis, financial services firms have worked hard to rebuild trust, gradually climbing back into neutral territory from a position where the industry ranked among the least trusted sectors.
But if the past few years have shown us anything, it’s that trust in financial services is still fragile. And it can be lost far more quickly than it is built.
While the outlook for financial services firms has certainly improved, trust remains delicate. Consumers are firmly in the driving seat and can even dictate whether firms retain their social licence to operate, as we saw during the collapse of Credit Suisse in 2023.
Cybersecurity incidents on the rise
At the end of 2025, that fragility was laid bare once again. Following a spate of cybersecurity incidents and the rapid rise of AI-enabled fraud, Attest data shows that half of British consumers said they trusted financial institutions less as a result.
And unlike in many other industries, when it comes to finance, consumers are far more willing to act on that loss of trust. One in five have already switched providers because of it. More than a third (39%) say trust is the single most important factor when choosing a financial product, far ahead of the next most important factor, lowest fees (18%).
But even this doesn’t tell the full story. Because ‘trust’, now more than ever, does not mean one thing to all consumers.
It is not a single, shared concept that can be measured and managed in the same way across an entire customer base. It is fluid, context-dependent and increasingly shaped by individual expectations, experiences and life stages.
A perfect storm reshaping trust
What makes the current moment particularly challenging is not just the scale of change, but its speed.
Consumers are moving faster than institutions, adopting new technologies, forming new expectations and redefining what good looks like, often ahead of the industry’s ability to respond.
At the same time, the environment in which trust is built has fundamentally changed. Financial services are no longer experienced through single, contained relationships. The environment is now embedded across digital journeys, shaped by interactions that extend beyond traditional banking channels, and influenced by a wider ecosystem of providers, platforms and technologies.
This has two important consequences. First, trust is not built in one place. It is shaped across multiple touchpoints, many of which sit outside a firm’s direct control. Second, the criteria by which trust is judged are shifting. Being secure or reliable is table stakes. Increasingly, trust is evaluated through experience: how intuitive something feels, how clearly it communicates, and how well it fits into a customer’s everyday life.
Against a backdrop of rising fraud, rapid AI adoption – spanning a wide range of consumer comfort levels – and ongoing economic pressure, the result is a more dynamic, more complex and more demanding landscape than financial services has faced before.
From brand promise to lived experience
Traditional banks continue to hold an advantage in baseline trust. Attest data shows that 77% of consumers trust traditional banks, reflecting decades of institutional credibility, regulatory oversight and scale.
However, that trust is far from unassailable and newer players are gaining ground. Over half of consumers now trust neobanks (54%), and while overall trust in cryptocurrency platforms remains lower at a quarter (24%), it rises significantly among younger and more cosmopolitan audiences – 41% among 25–34-year-olds and 44% among Londoners.
These figures point to a broader shift: trust is becoming more fluid, contextual, and influenced by experience rather than legacy.
FinTechs, in particular, are redefining what trust looks like. They are building it through intuitive design, frictionless onboarding and customer-centric experiences, leading to 15% of millennials putting complete trust in fintech apps, much higher than older cohorts. Increasingly, trust is less tied up with who provides a service and more about how well it works.
A generation-driven redefinition of trust
Exposure to different macro conditions is also shaping how different cohorts think about trust, and who they place it with.
With traditional financial life stages breaking down, younger consumers are not following the same patterns as previous generations; whether that is buying a home in their late 20s, building wealth in predictable ways, or engaging with financial products at expected milestones. These disruptions mean that the models many institutions still design around fail to reflect reality.
At the same time, a significant generational wealth transfer is underway. It’s estimated that more than £5 trillion in assets will be passed down the generations by 2050. Yet one in ten younger consumers are not financially confident or well-prepared to manage it. They are actively seeking guidance, often from a fragmented mix of sources – from social media to AI tools – leaving a gap for financial institutions to position themselves as trusted educators and advisors in an increasingly noisy landscape. Research we carried out around savings and investments found 87% of 25-34-year-olds expect financial services firms to help them understand investment products.
AI adds another layer to this dynamic. Its perceived value differs significantly by cohort. Older consumers are more likely to see AI as a tool for protection, for example detecting fraud and safeguarding their money. Younger consumers, meanwhile, are more open to AI playing a proactive role, whether that’s analysing spending, recommending savings strategies or even informing lending decisions.
Trust is contextual and should be understood in terms of who the customer is, what they need at that moment, and how their expectations are being shaped by the world around them.
From insight to action
Understanding that complexity is one thing. Responding to it is another.
Most financial services organisations are already sitting on vast amounts of data, tracking behaviours, sentiment and shifting expectations in near real time. But too often, insight remains observational – something that informs strategy decks rather than shaping lived customer experiences.
In an environment where trust is continuously tested, passive understanding has limited value. The real differentiator is how quickly and confidently organisations can translate that understanding into decisions customers experience directly.
That requires a shift in mindset. Not from data to insight, but from insight to execution. It means shortening the distance between what customers say, what organisations learn, and what ultimately changes as a result.
Today, trust isn’t built through broad brand narratives or periodic improvements. It takes shape in the moments that customers notice most: when something goes wrong, when a decision needs explaining, when speed and simplicity matter.
Ultimately, trust in financial services is now earned – and lost – in everyday customer interactions, making an organisation’s ability to act quickly on insight just as critical as the insight itself.
Learn more at attest.com
- Cybersecurity in FinTech