Australians trust banks more than advisers

Yet more research has emerged that Australians are more inclined to value financial advice provided by friends and family to that provided by financial advisers.

However, the same research suggests Australian consumers are inclined to trust their banks.

The latest research has been released by Datamonitor and claims that in the majority of markets such as Australia and Japan, the opinion and advice of friends and family rank ahead of all financial services institutions in terms of how much consumers trust them when it comes to their finances such as insurance.

“Specialists in insurance such as insurers themselves or financial advisers such as brokers are trusted strongly by only a minority of consumers (18.5 per cent and 20.4 per cent respectively) and their word is normally trusted considerably less than the non-expert advice,” Datamonitor senior analyst Andrew Haslip said.

The Datamonitor research found that 40.4 per cent of Australians professed to completely or greatly trust their national bank.

“This situation reflects the stable and well established position of the large domestic banks in the region and is particularly important for the insurance market, as many of the big banks are also active in the large home and care insurance markets,” Haslip said.