Government needs to stop the rorts
REPUTATION and public perception are very important to everyone, but never more so than when it involves money.
Being able to trust our financial experts is crucial for a functioning society. It’s vital for the economy, individual states, investment classes, the public sector, company fortunes and, of course, our household wealth and personal savings.
It’s a great pity then that we have had an endless parade of scams, frauds and rip-offs from our big financial institutions, advisers, companies and fund managers.
They clearly demonstrate they can’t be trusted.
And it’s an even greater pity that the government has still not stopped the rot. The ongoing exposures and revelations, the refusals to atone and the belligerent failure to face facts by chief executives, board members, regulators and politicians cast a heavy black cloud over our right to trust.
And it’s not just trust that they won’t rip us off, it’s also trust that they will actively do the right thing. Actively find mistakes and rectify them, actively introduce policies to eliminate the scams and just plain old do the right thing.
It was no surprise last week, therefore, to see the low opinion Australians hold of our finance professionals.
The reputations of company board members, executives, accountants, financial planners, stockbrokers and insurance brokers fell again this year, in the annual trustworthy survey, the Roy Morgan poll of ethics and honesty.
Add to these professions, real estate agents and car salespeople and we have almost a clean sweep of individuals who deal with our money.
Our homes, in particular, are often our greatest financial asset, yet 93% of the population don’t trust real estate agents. And when it comes to our second largest asset, our cars, 96% believe car salespeople have neither high ethics or honesty.
Stockbrokers, too, are now at their lowest level on record, so not even our share investing can be done in a trusting environment, with 89% of the population expecting low standards.
Perhaps next year the pollster might include superannuation funds, as this is rapidly growing as our most important long-term finance asset. That might make them smarten up.
But the biggest surprise this year was the increase in trust reported for bank managers. Believe it or not, bank managers increased their survey ranking by three percentage points, with only 67% of those surveyed saying they had no trust.
Sure, that’s an improvement but the vast majority of us have no faith in the organisations and people who we need to trust the most.
This appalling result can squarely be laid at the feet of the various governments who have systematically failed through legislation to give us back our confidence.
It’s not surprising then to see that politicians have also lost further ground in the trustworthy stakes this year.
After all, for consumers, it’s just been another year of taking unnecessary risks, feeling vulnerable and losing confidence in the very professions and leaders we should be able to trust.