Authentic Trust in Modern Business

Abstract

The authors analyze the foundations of trust in business relationships and show the importance of trust between business partners as the fundamental basis of any sustainable business. They focus on trust as the foundation of the wealth management relationship and analyze different possible actions that can be taken to establish and build trust in a relationship. But the authors also stress the dangers of using these actions as a technique to increase short-term revenues: Trust is hard to gain in practice but very fragile as well and can easily be lost. The authors demonstrate that even minor trust violations can increase doubt about the relationship and eventually harm future business. Clients increasingly demand trustworthy and authentic business partners that differentiate themselves through their actions from competitors—who may not be interested in building trusting relationships at all or may use trust only as another sales technique.

TOPICS: Wealth management, in wealth management