What can the financial services industry learn from a confectionery manufacturer? The parallels are not obvious. But having spent this morning on the production line of a leading confectionery manufacturer, it strikes me that bankers could do worse than spend some time examining the dynamics of an industry that few of us ever pause to consider.

Nobody needs confectionery. It is not critical to our future well-being. The pleasure it offers is transitory. Financial services, by contrast, should be the oil that lubricates the engine of the global economy enabling trade to globalise and deliver prosperity to billions.

But it is bankers not confectionery makers that have the image problem. Nobody is accusing confectionery companies of bringing the global financial system to the brink of collapse and they have enjoyed over a century of extreme brand loyalty that the marketing departments of beleaguered banks can only dream about. [Read more…]