No Small Change

CHAPTER 6Real People, Real Lives

The new financial services marketing requires us to make a lot of changes. Many of them are detailed in the following chapters. Some are changes that need to happen within marketing departments, and in the way that marketing people think and act. Some – generally the more problematic ones – need to take place more broadly, across financial services firms as a whole. They affect other departments, sometimes even all departments. And a number affect the thoughts and actions of senior management.

But the way we look at it, there's another kind of change that's needed. It's a kind of change that isn't really about specifics, although specific examples can be given. It's a change in the way that retail financial services people need to think about their customers, and about what it means to do a good job for them. It's a need to reconsider the balance of power, or the balance of authority, between industry and customer – a need, in the simplest and clearest terms, to recognise that in a genuinely customer-centric industry, the people on the inside really cannot go on acting on the basis that consumers are ignorant, stupid and prone to foolish behaviour, and therefore can be patronised, and treated with little respect, and need protection from the consequences of their own folly.

Few if any financial services firms – or individuals working in them – are likely to acknowledge that they think of their customers in this way. On the contrary, the very ...