By Steve Conley
Founder, Academy of Life Planning & Get SAFE
11 November 2025
Trust Precedes Trade
Is consumer protection a priority?
Is economic growth important?
Here’s the thing — trust precedes trade.
It’s a simple truth, but one we’ve forgotten.
In August 2024, the UK Supreme Court’s Hopcroft ruling confirmed that credit brokers owe no fiduciary duty and may lawfully take hidden commissions from lenders. That decision didn’t expose a loophole; it revealed a design flaw in our financial architecture.
A system not built for trust cannot be trustworthy.
The Price of Broken Trust
If Britain’s financial system isn’t built for trust, the consequences are everywhere.
Every week I meet pensioners, business owners, and families through our charity initiative, Get SAFE, who have been financially devastated and institutionally ignored. They are not rare exceptions — they are the product of a system designed for opacity, not integrity.
When governance is opaque and duty optional, the economy pays a hidden price:
the Trust Discount — the devaluation penalty that markets apply to untrustworthy systems.
This penalty manifests as lower GDP, weaker investment, and higher borrowing costs for both firms and the government.
As the World Bank and OECD have long observed, nations with low institutional trust suffer slower growth — typically 0.6–1% lower GDP per capita growth for each point drop in governance trust (Kaufmann & Kraay, Worldwide Governance Indicators, 2020; OECD Trust and Growth, 2019).
Every scandal, every bailout, every failed regulator compounds the discount.
It’s why Britain’s cost of capital remains high, why balance sheets fall into deficit, and why we raise taxes to fill holes that trust could have filled.
Integrity Pays: The Economics of the Trust Premium
So what if our systems were structurally trustworthy?
When integrity is systemic, opportunity expands.
High-trust organisations deliver 15–30% higher productivity and profitability, according to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace (2024).
Across an economy, that equates to tens of billions in additional GDP, as evidenced by the Nordic nations — among the world’s highest-trust societies, where average country risk premia are 0.5–1.0 percentage points lower than the UK (Damodaran, Country Risk Premiums, NYU Stern, 2025).
In short:
- Low trust = high friction = low growth.
- High trust = low friction = high performance.
That is the Trust Premium — the valuation uplift that investors assign to fiduciary behaviour, transparency, and accountability.
Fiduciary duty isn’t a regulatory burden. It’s a growth strategy.
The Structural Root of Decline
Over a decade ago, I was Head of Investments at HSBC and chaired the British Bankers’ Association’s steering group in the run-up to the Retail Distribution Review.
I was working to make financial advice structurally trustworthy — to plan the client before planning the money.
But the banks made a different choice.
They decided the cost of capital was too high in bancassurance and shifted into lending — capital-light, regulation-free, and high-yield in distress.
It was a short-term profit play that proved structurally untrustworthy.
Ironically, the victims of that pivot — those exploited through opaque loans, commissions, and mis-selling — are now the very people I serve through Get SAFE, helping victims of financial exploitation rebuild their lives.
The project I began then, called the Trusted Adviser, has evolved into the Academy of Life Planning — a movement to rebuild financial services on the principles of fiduciary duty, transparency, and empowerment.
Britain’s Real Deficit Isn’t Fiscal — It’s Structural
Recent research confirms that the productivity crisis is not merely technological — it’s human.
Studies from Gallup, the London School of Economics, and Bain & Company all show that employee inspiration and happiness are among the strongest predictors of productivity and profitability.
At the macroeconomic level, OECD and World Bank data demonstrate that institutional trust directly drives GDP growth, while low-trust systems suffer a measurable “Trust Discount.”
The evidence is overwhelming: trust delivers growth; growth doesn’t deliver trust.
The same is true of finance: disconnection from purpose creates drag.
The National Bureau of Economic Research (2024) found that one point of happiness on a 10-point scale can improve productivity by up to 20% for complex tasks and raise return on assets by 1–1.2 percentage points.
Bain & Company’s Time, Talent, Energy report showed that inspired workers are 2.25 times more productive than the average — a 125% increase.
These human-level findings mirror the macroeconomic truth:
Trust delivers growth. Growth doesn’t deliver trust.
A Fork in the Road
We now stand at a defining moment.
What’s being called a “growth agenda” is, in truth, an erosion agenda — eroding trust, capability, and long-term prosperity.
If we want sustainable growth, we must rebuild structurally trustworthy systems — from boardrooms to policy frameworks.
This means recognising that:
- Economic efficiency cannot come at the cost of ethical deficiency.
- Transparency and accountability are not optional — they are productive assets.
Rebuilding Structural Trustworthiness
To replace the Trust Discount with a Trust Dividend, we must:
1️⃣ Embed fiduciary duty in law wherever money is intermediated.
2️⃣ Build transparency by design into finance and AI systems.
3️⃣ Make accountability a condition of profit, not an afterthought.
These aren’t ideological aspirations — they’re pragmatic economics.
The data show that trust multiplies value across every scale, from personal well-being to national prosperity.
From Erosion to Empowerment
At the Academy of Life Planning and Get SAFE, we see both sides of this equation — the structural causes and the human consequences.
We turn victims into victors through life planning, education, and empowerment.
Because trust is not a slogan — it is a structure.
And when we rebuild that structure, we rebuild confidence —
in markets, in money, and in each other.
Britain doesn’t need higher taxes. It needs higher trust.
References
- Hopcroft v. Hickman & Others [2024] UKSC 32 — Supreme Court judgment confirming absence of fiduciary duty in credit broking.
- Kaufmann, D., & Kraay, A. (2020). Worldwide Governance Indicators. World Bank Group. Kaufmann, D., & Kraay, A. (2020). Governance Indicators and Economic Performance. World Bank Policy Research Working Paper. → Confirms direct link between transparency, fiduciary standards, and sustainable economic output.
- OECD (2019). Trust and Growth: A Review of the Evidence. OECD Publishing, Paris. OECD (2019). Trust and Growth: A Review of the Evidence. OECD Publishing, Paris.
→ Institutional trust correlates with stronger GDP growth and policy effectiveness.
OECD Trust Data Portal - Gallup (2024). State of the Global Workplace Report. Gallup (2024). State of the Global Workplace.→ Organisations with highly engaged employees report 21% higher profitability and 17% higher productivity.
- Damodaran, A. (2025). Country Risk Premiums Dataset. NYU Stern School of Business. Damodaran, A. (2025). Country Risk Premiums Dataset. NYU Stern School of Business.
→ The UK’s country risk premium is roughly 0.5–1.0pp higher than Nordic nations, reflecting lower institutional trust. - Bain & Company (2024). Time, Talent, Energy: The New Productivity Frontier. Bain & Company (2024). Time, Talent, Energy: The New Productivity Frontier.
→ Inspired employees are 2.25× more productive than satisfied ones — a 125% increase in value creation. Bain Report link - National Bureau of Economic Research (2024). Happiness and Productivity: Evidence from Large-Scale Worker Surveys.
- World Bank (2020). Governance Indicators and Economic Growth. World Bank (2020). Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) — Governance and Growth.
→ Countries with higher governance trust achieve 0.6–1.0% higher GDP per capita growth per trust percentile. - Oswald, A. J., Proto, E., & Sgroi, D. (2015). Happiness and Productivity.
Journal of Labor Economics, 33(4), 789-822.
→ Experimental evidence: happier workers show 12% higher productivity on complex tasks.
[DOI: 10.1086/681096] - De Neve, J.-E., & Ward, G. (2017). Happiness at Work: Job Satisfaction as an Economic Driver.
CEP Discussion Paper No. 1485, London School of Economics.
→ Finds a positive causal link between life satisfaction and firm performance. - Edelman (2024). Trust Barometer. → 64% of respondents see business integrity as critical to economic stability; nations with high trust experience stronger investment inflows and social cohesion. Edelman Trust Barometer
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