Every message is a moment of trust

1. Louder, not closer

Reach is up, but trust isn’t. In the first half of 2024, the Financial Services emails tracked by Comperemedia doubled from 367m to 730m. Over the same period, read rates fell from 15.0% to 11.4%. 

Advertising tells the same story. 79% of UK adults recall seeing a Financial Services ad in the past year, but only 23% feel understood by those campaigns (Mintel, 2025). Meanwhile, trust in the sector has barely moved in seven years. Only 39% of UK adults have confidence in the industry and just 36% believe most firms are honest and transparent. 

A familiar moment: a loan offer lands in the inbox of someone with no debt and healthy savings. It isn’t just noise. It tells them you don’t know them. 

People decide almost instantly whether a message is “for me”. When the sender fails that test, they pay a credibility penalty. Repeated irrelevance teaches your audience to ignore you altogether. Every irrelevant message makes the next one easier to ignore. The answer isn’t necessarily fewer messages, it’s clearer, more relevant ones.

2. Where trust breaks: automation that can’t explain itself 

People don’t reject technology, they reject decisions they can’t understand. In October 2025, half of UK adults said generative AI makes them anxious, and 46% worried about a lack of human oversight in Financial Services. 38% said banks are innovating too fast, compared with just 7% who want them to go faster (FIS/Opinium). Disclosure matters too: 80% of UK and US consumers say banks should be clear when AI is involved. Nearly 40% would trust a bank less, or leave it, if AI were used without their knowledge (Forsta, 2025).

A familiar moment: you’re locked out of business banking the day before payroll, and a chatbot loops you through irrelevant prompts. Every minute, you trust the system, and the brand behind it, a little less. 

The behavioural science explains why: when an algorithm gets something wrong, people forgive it less than they would forgive a person (algorithm aversion). People accept bad news more readily when the process feels fair (procedural justice). And a visible route to a person restores a sense of control. 

The fix is simple to state: say in one line why someone is seeing this, show what you checked, and make it easy to reach a real, human person. 

3. Where trust is won: the moments that matter

Trust is built in the moments people remember. Think of your first bank card, your first mortgage, the life cover you took out when a child arrived, the pension you finally sorted. People store these as episodes. They remember where they were and how they felt. 

Messages that fit one of those moments get noticed and remembered. When an offer matches a goal someone already has (“get mortgage-ready”), they are more willing to act. Showing what most people do next calms nerves at a big transition. 

Three things turn a relevant moment into action: 

• One promise, one next step for each proposition and audience. 
• Channels that match behaviour. Younger audiences treat social as a place to learn when it’s accurate and useful. Older audiences still rely on TV and press, and email and the app carry the transactions. 
• Assurance next to the button. Put protections, fraud guarantees and “speak to a person” beside the call to action, where the decision is made. 

4. Six principles to make scale feel personal

For us and our clients, “made more human” is a practice, not just a strapline. Small choices change how people feel and what they do: a shorter sentence, a line that explains why, a reassuring close. Run every message and every moment that matters through six checks: 

1. Pass the “for me” test. If people can see it’s for someone like them, they’ll engage (relevance and goal congruence). 
2. Make it easy to read. People judge messages that are easy to process as more accurate and safer. Use plain English, concrete benefits and a clear hierarchy (processing fluency). 
3. One job, one action. Too many options cause paralysis. Put the detail behind a “More detail” link (choice overload). 
4. Show your workings. Explain why someone is seeing this, list what you checked and offer a person (algorithm transparency). 
5. Be fair when it’s hard. Acknowledge, explain, give options, then a next step. One bad interaction outweighs several good ones, so invest most in fraud alerts, errors and declines (procedural justice, negativity bias). 
6. End well, and show your guarantees. People remember the peak and the ending. Close with a recap, reassurance and one next step, and keep protections visible near the call to action (peak–end rule, assurance signals). 

 

Brands win when messages feel “for me, right now”: clear, and delivered in the right moment and channel.   

5. Prove it in 90 days

Clear communication is now something the regulator expects to see evidence of. In March 2026, the FCA’s review of the Consumer Duty’s consumer understanding outcome asked firms to test communications before and after they change them, using tools such as comprehension checks and A/B tests. It also asked firms to start with the problems that complaints and drop-off data reveal. The test plan that proves the commercial case also produces that evidence. 

Every test measures three things: Do people get it? Do they know what to do next? Do they do it? 

1. Days 1–30: set the stage. Pick two propositions and one high-risk moment, such as a savings upgrade and a fraud alert. Agree the one-sentence promise and next step for each. Take a baseline of your Clarity Score. 
2. Days 31–60: run the tests. Run two A/B tests comparing a plain-English, human-toned version against the current one. Redesign one difficult moment, such as a credit decline, using fair-process structure. Add “why you’re seeing this” and “what we checked” to one decision page. 
3. Days 61–90: show the story. Compare before and after, keep what works, and line up the next two journeys. 

The Clarity Score tracks four signals: 

• the share who agree “this was for someone like me” 
• the share who answer “what happens next?” correctly 
• the share who agree “I know what to do next” 
• “what does this mean?” contacts per 1,000 customers (lower is better) 

Set targets against last quarter’s baseline, never drop legally required information, and give vulnerable customers slower, more supportive routes. 

The trust test

Technology is reshaping Financial Services, but customers still want to feel recognised, reassured and respected. The winners won’t be the brands that talk the most. They’ll be the ones that make the most sense. 

Put any message through one test. Can a customer explain your promise back in one sentence, see one next step, and feel it was meant for them? If not, it isn’t clear enough yet, and it’s costing you trust. 

Humanity can’t live only in branches and adviser conversations. It has to scale through propositions, journeys and tone of voice. That’s when growth feels like connection, not automation.