Measuring Trust in a Private Banking Relationship

About the Trust Ladder©

More than anything else, trust and client relationship is the single one competitive advantage in private banking, but how can you measure trust?

We all know that trust goes far beyond portfolio performance or client satisfaction which are just contributors to trust.

To measure trust, we could ask client. Reality is that to get an unbiased answer, we already need a certain level of trust…

Let’s look at an easier way.

Ask yourself a series of questions on how your client responds to your interactions. Easy, as you can observe it by yourself.

This questionnaire has been designed with a ladder in mind. The higher you climb up the questions, the higher the trust.

Looking at the questions gives you a sense of how deep you are able to go into the relationship, and what you may want to do to go deeper. It also helps to anticipate the next question you need to ask.

And it does not only gives you a score of where you stand.
If you are able to ask the next question and get an answer, you are indeed deepening trust, because you are engaging the client into a deeper relationship, and he or she is responding.
This is essential to retain and grow revenues.

A client centric bank constantly identifies more and more needs with existing clients (when a product centric bank looks for more and more prospects to sell products).

The questionnaire relies on the work of two psychologists, Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham, on the Johari window, translated into the wealth management world.

With this approach, we can objectivize, standardize and benchmark the trust score from Good Provider to Tactical Partner and ultimately to Trusted Advisor.

Question yourself after each client interaction, see how your trust score evolves and prepare for the next question.

You can access the tool The Trust Ladder© here.