There’s no point in a financial services Trip Advisor unless reputation matters


Once again, a major mis-selling scandal has broken out, with 13 high street banks and credit card issuers facing a £1.3bn redress bill for mis-sold card protection policies. No amount of financial regulation seems to stop the flow.

Until 1986, there were no mis-selling scandals. The sales of financial products were regulated by contract law and a few pieces of primary regulation, just like the sale of everything else. If a product was not fit for purpose – in other words, if the product did not do what it said on the tin – then it would be possible to get recompense. If the product was simply not fit for the buyer, then caveat emptor (buyer beware) held. But is it right that we treat financial products differently from other purchases?

Regulating the sale of financial products and promoting a compensation culture creates a number of serious problems. First, the regulation of financial advice means that there is a lot less financial advice available. It is more difficult for people to find out about the suitability of financial products, except from the regulated professionals who make a living from selling those products or advising about their suitability. The barriers to entry into the advice market are higher because of the costs of regulation. Secondly, businesses no longer have such a stake in developing a good reputation for fair dealing, selling suitable products to customers and so on.

Jonathan Macey at Yale University has just written a book about the importance of reputation in financial markets – The Death of Corporate Reputation. He shows how, in the past, a good reputation was vital for gaining access to US financial markets. But in today’s highly regulated markets, corporate reputation does not really matter to customers. Regulation is supposed to look after customers and, if that does not work, there is always a compensation payout.

And this leads to the third problem – customers have no incentive to be discerning. Before we buy a car, we might consult What Car? or Honest John in the Telegraph. Before we spend £200 on a holiday, we might go to Trip Advisor and spend an hour or so browsing. Is there any chance of a Trip Advisor for financial services? Is it worth checking the reputation of an insurance company before we invest £2,000 a year with it? No. What would be the point? Why spend time checking other people’s experience of a bank, financial adviser or pension provider when the regulator will do the job for you and, if the company does not do as the regulator wishes, the customer will be compensated in any case?

Regulation comes at a huge cost. Not only does it prevent market mechanisms from improving the quality of service provision, it is arbitrary, ad hoc and complex. It prevents innovation, raises risks to firms and therefore costs to customers, and has excluded large numbers of people from the financial advice market altogether.

We have tried binding the sale of financial products up in government red tape. This approach has failed. Perhaps it is time to let caveat emptor reign and the consumer – not the regulator – be king.

This article originally appeared in City AM.

Academic and Research Director, IEA

Philip Booth is Senior Academic Fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs. He is also Director of the Vinson Centre and Professor of Economics at the University of Buckingham and Professor of Finance, Public Policy and Ethics at St. Mary’s University, Twickenham. He also holds the position of (interim) Director of Catholic Mission at St. Mary’s having previously been Director of Research and Public Engagement and Dean of the Faculty of Education, Humanities and Social Sciences. From 2002-2016, Philip was Academic and Research Director (previously, Editorial and Programme Director) at the IEA. From 2002-2015 he was Professor of Insurance and Risk Management at Cass Business School. He is a Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Federal Studies at the University of Kent and Adjunct Professor in the School of Law, University of Notre Dame, Australia. Previously, Philip Booth worked for the Bank of England as an adviser on financial stability issues and he was also Associate Dean of Cass Business School and held various other academic positions at City University. He has written widely, including a number of books, on investment, finance, social insurance and pensions as well as on the relationship between Catholic social teaching and economics. He is Deputy Editor of Economic Affairs. Philip is a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society, a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries and an honorary member of the Society of Actuaries of Poland. He has previously worked in the investment department of Axa Equity and Law and was been involved in a number of projects to help develop actuarial professions and actuarial, finance and investment professional teaching programmes in Central and Eastern Europe. Philip has a BA in Economics from the University of Durham and a PhD from City University.


2 thoughts on “There’s no point in a financial services Trip Advisor unless reputation matters”

  1. Posted 23/08/2013 at 14:55 | Permalink

    Not only do customers now not need to worry about suppliers, but suppliers do not need to worry about customers — since it is the regulator they are accountable to. (This is a point that Philip himself has made in the past.) Many years ago Hayek wrote that ‘competition is in a large measure competition for reputation or good will….The function of competition is … precisely to teach us who will serve us well.’ Only this morning this was brought home to me. My boiler was not producing hot water so I rang an engineer to have it looked at. The girl asked me where I got hold of their name and I said “from my address book. I’ve used you before!” The engineer arrived within an hour or two and put things right. It was a bit pricey, but I was well satisfied! That’s how a proper market works.

  2. Posted 24/08/2013 at 15:00 | Permalink

    Whilst I am against all types of regulation surely the mis-selling of card protection policies was that they did not do what was on the tin.

    If governments restricted their remit in the private sector to ensuring the quality offered was indeed what was on the tin and to ensuring robust competition in all sectors then I can see absolutely no need for regulation

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