It’s hard to remember when financial services had such a starring role on the news and on TV in general. So many commentators are willing, and able, to point out the failings of the banks, and in particular, their lending and funding policies.And, as we’re technically well into a recession, the guess work has begun. When will it stop getting worse? When will the recovery begin? What can financial services companies do to a) survive; and b) come out of this in a positive position and light?

And I think that final point is a rather important one. It’s not just the financial position of the banks and building societies that will get us out of this mess it’s the ‘man/woman on the street’s’ perception of what is available to them and who they’re getting it from.

So I was really intrigued when David Smith in The Times brought out the ‘It’s not all as bad as it seems’ story. His opinion is that generally we’ll have more to spend next year but are likely to be much less willing to spend, credit has dried up.

But is this really what consumers believe? It’s certainly what they’re told, particularly for mortgages. Are mortgages really going to affect what people think about the shops and how confident they’re being with their cash?

Consumer confidence, a term so widely used as the definitive tool that is in touch with consumers and what they think, is one point of research that gets to the nub of this. But without a broader more specific understanding of what consumers are doing, believe they are doing and thinking, can we get any idea of the gap that financial services has to bridge to help lift us out of the pickle we’re in.

“[Nationwide's] Consumer Confidence Index fell to 40 in January, down from 48 in December… BUT THE SPENDING INDEX BUCKS THE TREND.” 1 in 3 think it’s a good time to buy something large like a car. What’s going on?

Certainly for our own part, the Quaestor finance team has been making sense of the consumer market and consumer perceptions of money and banks for our clients for a long time. Our own findings, qualitative and quantitative, stand to confirm these consumer perceptions…even for the traditionally hard-up sub-primers.

You’d think that the perceptions of the availability of credit that really affects these people, eg credit cards would have crashed and burned but it hasn’t. In fact, it’s just about the same as it was a year ago. And it’s not changing how they think they go about finding these products. The same type of person is searching and shopping around for their financial products or not.

Surely, this should be changing. So are they in denial or are they just accepting what they can get? Probably both.

Their confidence is definitely hit. Many now believe that they will not be better off in a year…but there’s a twist, this only happened very late last year. And it’s their confidence in financial services and their ability to provide.

What does this mean for you the financial services maestros?

As Francis McGee, head of corporate affairs for Aegon UK, recently said “We must resist imposing a model that suits the industry rather than the consumer and start putting the customer in charge of building a new advice service. Until we do, we will not earn that much needed trust.” And I think this applies to all financial services…right down to and probably most importantly everyday current accounts, credit cards and insurance.

Get close to your customers again and find out what they need…re-define your brands and the trust in them.