Is trust a marker of future financial performance?

Ross Jackson, Associate Partner at EY, says the answer is yes – he claims a new tool developed by the global services firm means trust can be used as an accurate measure of a company’s success going forward.

It ranks five main areas – proficiency, consistency, integrity, advocacy to values and openness. He said the more trusted a company is, the easier it is to do business with.

Mr Jackson compared the energy industry with the banking sector, noting the former’s average net trust score is around 24, while the latter’s is lower with a rating of around 18, showing energy companies are quite competitive and are generally doing better in terms of trust than often thought.

He said “it’s actually relatively positive, so it’s actually a good news story for the energy sector” and noted that the water sector was significantly less competitive by comparison.

The Associate Partner told ELN that EY’s methodology for defining and measuring trust uses technology to gather data from the internet across a variety of sources and inputs this into a calculation to evaluate how much a company or organisation is trusted.

He suggested there was a positive correlation between levels of trust measured by the EY tool and future financial performance, noting that in many cases it could provide a more accurate insight than factors such as revenue and financial data, as trust measurements are taken in real-time rather than retrospectively.

Watch the video above for the full interview and more information.