Financial advisers are the least mistrusted providers of financial services, with clients being more suspicious that banks and credit card providers are taking more than a fair share of the money pie, a survey has shown.
Distributive fairness, or 'how the pie is shared' between the customer and their financial services provider, was the cause for most concern among consumers, the research by Monash and Nottingham universities for the Financial Services Institute of Australasia (Finsia) said.
"They don't believe they are getting their fair share across the three types of financial service providers: banks, financial advisers and credit card providers," professors Steve Worthington and James Devlin of Monash and Nottingham respectively said.
Financial advisers ranked highest overall at 78.92 per cent in overall mean perceptions of fairness because of the "opportunities they have to build personal relationships with their clients", Worthington and Devlin said.
In contrast, banks at 71.16 per cent overall "suffered significant decreases in perceptions of fairness as customer relationships lengthened", the authors of the report, "Customers' Perceptions of Fairness in Financial Services in Australia", said.
"Customers did not perceive that long relationships with their banks led to improved treatment," they said.
Credit card providers fared the worst at 62.27 per cent overall compared with financial advisers and banks. "They do not have the benefit of strong interpersonal relationships with their customers and may need to review their policies and procedures impacting customer interactions to explore other ways to encourage greater perceptions of fairness among users," the report said.
Finsia chief executive Russell Thomas said the survey of 750 customers built on United Kingdom research and showed Australian customers thought they received fairer treatment from their financial service providers than their UK counterparts.
Thomas said the Australian research results showed "that financial service providers who are able to develop professional relationships with customers over a period of time have a distinct advantage over other financial service providers in positively influencing perceptions of fairness".
"These research results indicate that distributive fairness (how the 'pie is shared' between the customer and his or her financial services provider) is what causes most concern for customers," he said.
The research included an online poll in April of 750 customers who represented the adult Australian population by age, gender and state or territory. Then, 250 respondents were surveyed for their main bank, credit card provider and financial adviser.
