What has changed is the speed at which reputational capital can be built or lost — in a regulator's ruling, a client's feed, an employee's post, a headline that travels before we've finished reading it. That cost is neither small nor quickly undone.

When trust breaks at scale, the damage is measured in years, not weeks: listed financial firms hit by a major reputational crisis can take two to three years to recover pre-crisis value, and some never do. Trust is slow to build, quick to lose, expensive to rebuild.

This year, Old Mutual made a deliberate choice: to govern trust the way we govern capital — measured, owned and reported on, not defended only after something goes wrong. That means a standing trust metric reviewed alongside financial capital.

Reputation isn't just a communications output. It's the accumulated judgement stakeholders make about whether we can be trusted — to keep our promises, do right when no one is watching, and be there when it matters most. That judgement isn't sentiment; it's an asset we observe with discipline, not a score paraded externally.

Trust impacts the bottom line directly:

  • It lowers the cost of doing business — trusted brands win clients more cheaply and recover faster from setbacks.
  • It is a precondition for growth — people hand their savings and their futures to institutions they believe in.
  • It is a buffer in a crisis — organisations that survive shocks are those with trust already in reserve.
  • It compounds — every kept promise makes the next one more believable, and every breach is remembered longer than it's forgiven.

Picture a family that has paid into a policy for fifteen years without ever claiming, then suffers a loss. What happens next — paid promptly, explained clearly, handled with the same care as those fifteen years — says more about our reputation than any campaign we could run that year.

Doing right by trust accumulates into reputation, and reputation underwrites business strategy — the point where it stops being a risk we defend and becomes an advantage we compound.

I think of this less as a checklist than a curve: trust rises with alignment and consistency, is tested the moment something breaks, and is rebuilt or lost in how we respond. Four moments matter most:

The promise: The coherence between what we commit to and what we demonstrably deliver. When this gap widens, reputational exposure grows

The proof: The consistency of stakeholder experience across every touchpoint. Inconsistency, not just failure, drives reputational erosion.

The test: The speed and honesty with which we acknowledge shortfalls in delivery or conduct. Delay compounds damage and creates regulatory exposure.

The return: The speed and effectiveness with which trust is restored after a failure — often more consequential than the failure itself.

Once we can measure trust, it stops being a soft outcome defended after a crisis — it becomes a strategic asset governed before one.

For a business built on long-term promises, that's not a philosophical nicety — it's the difference between an institution that endures and one slowly hollowed out.

Within financial services, something has shifted: regulators no longer see reputation as a communications function but as governance. King V and the FSCA's focus on conduct means they assess not just financial soundness, but how we behave, and whether we can be trusted.

For most of corporate history, reputation was managed after the fact — a press release, a campaign, a careful word. That world is gone.

The narratives that damage us most aren't perception problems to be argued away — they're signals of a real gap between what we promise and what people experience. We close that gap not with messaging, but with governance: watching trust as an early signal and acting before an issue surfaces.

A group trusted to deliver consistently earns a lower cost of capital, a higher multiple, and the benefit of the doubt when it invests. A group whose trust is fraying sees good results discounted anyway.

By governing trust deliberately — keeping our conduct and our customers' experience in step with our strategy — we ensure that when the business delivers on its promise, the market believes it, and rewards it.

That is the curve every institution rides, whether it chooses to govern it or not. Old Mutual has chosen to govern it deliberately rather than defend it after the fact — the direction I expect the wider industry to move in.

For more information, visit www.oldmutual.co.za. You can also follow Old Mutual on Facebook, LinkedIn, X, or on Instagram.

*Image courtesy of contributor