In April, Entrust released the results of a survey gauging consumer sentiment about the industries most trusted to protect personal data.

5 ways banks can retain consumer trust

The findings show that people trust the financial sector in general and their banks in particular more than any other industry vertical or organizations that touch their data. A third of those surveyed said they trust financial services organizations most to protect their personal data. More than half (52%) said they trust their banks specifically to protect their data.

While our results indicate people have relatively high trust in banks, the research also illustrates that trust can be fleeting. It’s easy for trust to be eroded or disappear completely. Financial institutions can retain that trust by building customer confidence that they have things under control. Here are 5 ways to do so:

  1. Take care to vet the offers you send to your customers. Ill-targeted offers and services are a nuisance and often considered electronic junk mail, which over time can weaken your relationship with customers.
  2. Be proactive with easy-to-understand explanations and approvals before sharing any data outside your institution, in advance of California regulations where it will become mandatory.
  3. Focus on how you use private information to protect customers by flagging potential credit card fraud in real time or predicting an account overdraft and rescheduling a bill payment automatically to compensate.
  4. Use customer data analytics for good by providing an actionable, comprehensive single-customer data lake that enables true personalized services in anticipation of customers’ needs, wants, preferences and quirks.
  5. Educate customers about encryption technologies so that they can feel more confident that you are doing everything possible to safeguard their private data.

For more information on how Entrust helps businesses protect critical data, check out our product page.