Restoring Trust Post Crisis

In a speech at the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association's annual conference last month, BNY Mellon President Karen Peetz urged the financial services industry to accept responsibility for the loss of trust stemming from the financial crisis and fundamentally rethink policies and rebuild organizations.

RESTORING TRUST POST CRISIS
by Karen Peetz, President, BNY Mellon
2013 SIFMA Annual Meeting, New York City

Clearly, the world is not the same as it was before the crisis. When a thriving industry in the U.S. was often mirrored on the other side of the Atlantic, something fundamental has changed.

At BNY Mellon we call this era, the age of the global reset.

Part of this global reset is fallout from the financial crisis. But even bigger forces are reshaping the markets. These forces include the debt overhang in the U.S. and Europe. And the rise of middle class consumers in China and other emerging economies, the growth of new markets, shifts in trading patterns, aging populations, and new technologies transforming the speed and transparency of financial data.

We’ve also seen governments step in and create new layers of regulation. Some of these regulations appear to be helpful and may lead to greater transparency. But many add to the time and cost of doing business. And some just outright impede market growth, forcing all of us to find new ways to grow our businesses.

To be sure, the global reset has caused enormous stress well beyond the issues associated with the loss of trust. But it also provides tremendous opportunities for those of us who can see it; opportunities to rebuild current policies and traditions, to build new management teams, to embrace diversity, and to adopt new approaches.

None of us can afford to go back to the old days with the global reset transforming the nature of business and the economies as we know it.

We have to understand why the financial crisis happened and embrace the new realities we are operating under. We have to see the global reset as a tremendous opportunity to rethink policies and rebuild organizations. We have to embrace diversity and foster healthy dissent. Make it part and parcel of what we are. It will make us wiser, more innovative, more adaptable, and better risk managers.

We have to put the client at the center of our decision making process, we have to show that the world in which we operated has changed and we embrace new ways of thinking and operating.

In other words, we have to prove ourselves, prove ourselves worthy of trust.

For only through trust can we again be that engine of economic growth. Only then can we build financial markets that are sustainable.