Building Positive Reputation and low risk for Financial Organizations Through Culture

Abstract

In a continuously changing world environment, following financial crisis, pandemic crisis, wars, environmental disasters, along with the changes in the once "static" banking sector per-se, given the expansion of digital currencies, online financial services, expansion of digital offerings, the rise of open-banking, one should expect a substantial change to an organisation's reputation. Risks are emerging from everywhere and have as a result the increased focus from investors and regulators on how culture is formed in financial institutions. At the same time, culture (a quite diverse term that we will try in this paper to define and place in the banking sector frame), is considered to be a critical factor for banks to be able to respond effectively to all the changes and build long-lasting positive reputation and success. The ability to leverage the compliance program and embed ethics, top-down, contributes also significantly. Here, we will visit the notion of transformation, change culture in a digital era. In this paper, we will try to define positive reputation for banks in this new era and set the grounds for the importance of understanding the need to manage or/and change Culture, along with aligning risks and people.