Southeast Asia leads the world in trust of banks

 

In Sri Lanka, Thailand, Cambodia, and Malaysia, almost nine in 10 residents expressed confidence in the financial institutions in their countries.

Confidence in East Asia did not lag far behind its southern neighbors. Median trust in the region was 66 per cent; in China, that figure was slightly higher at 72 per cent.

In Thailand, where 89 per cent of adults said they have confidence in financial institutions, economic growth has exceeded economists’ expectations since the country’s devastating floods in 2011. High levels of confidence in the banks of many developing Asian countries is a good sign for the expansion of the financial services sectors, which in turn bodes well for future economic growth in these countries.

On the contrary, Thirteen percent of Greeks said they had confidence in their country’s banks or financial institutions in 2012, leading the nearly all-European list of countries where trust in financial institutions was among the worst in the world last year. Seven European Union countries had trust levels lower than 30 per cent, far below the median 55 per cent across 135 countries. Even in the EU’s largest funder of the eurozone bailouts, Germany, fewer than four in 10 (38 per cent) expressed confidence in their country’s financial institutions.

Lack of confidence in financial institutions among EU member states undoubtedly results from the prolonged debt crisis afflicting the entire eurozone and the banking industry’s perceived role in causing it. In several EU countries, confidence was lower in 2012 than at the height of the global financial crisis in 2008 and 2009. The ongoing crisis of confidence is also a major problem for Europe’s economic recovery, as it may cause many to shun the financial services industry out of fear that their banks will fail.

Confidence in financial institutions was regionally weakest in the EU; among the 27 EU member states, a median 37 per cent of residents said they have confidence in their country’s banks, while 55 per cent did not. However, the trust level in the U.S. was exactly as low as the EU median, in line with therecord-low levels Gallup found three years after the recession officially ended in the US.