On BBC Radio 4 "Today" programme Barclay's CEO Antony Jenkins talked about the bank's results, profits down, bonuses up as well as his plans to transform the bank. This transformation is all part of his ambition to bring ethics back into banking and he seems to have a fairly realistic timescale of 5- 10 years before customers see a difference (following c 140,000 employees having been trained in the new values)..
One of the key points that he made was in relation to a major business benefit of ethical conduct, that of competitive advantage.He seems to be leading the bank in the right direction with a new balanced scorecard being announced today with 2 financial targets and 6 "good citizen" measures including a "net promoter score" by customers and measures on being the "most trusted bank" by YouGov.
However, any form of market positioning, or re-positioning has to have 4 elements to be successful, clarity, consistency, credibility and competitiveness. Jenkins is telling a pretty convincing story but where it still falls down is in the areas of consistency and credibility. However hard the bankers tell the public that big bonuses are necessary for competitiveness etc the perception is quite different and is still not believed (even when Jenkins himself has waived his own bonus this years). The public and customers still need convincing because big bonuses are inconsistent with the rest of the messages and in fact continue to damage them.
Let's hope Jenkins stays the course for the next 5- 10 years to continue to communicate clearly and with more credibility.
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