From the left, local Securities and Investment Institute members Ken Gibbs, Rupert Stow, Peter Moffatt and SII president Simon Culhane. (Picture by Adrian Miller, 0835677)

GREATER trust and honesty is filtering its way through the financial markets, according to leading financier Simon Culhane.

The Securities & Investment Institute chief executive, who was in the island presenting to local SII members at an interactive seminar on integrity in the current financial climate, said scandals over the past 12 to 18 months had resulted in a huge rethink by firms as to how they conducted their business.

He said high-profile fraud cases such as Bernard Madoff and Sir Allen Stanford, and even the MP expenses scandal, highlighted the importance of not only portraying an image of trust, but delivering it.

‘Look at the MP expenses scandal. About 10 of them looked criminal, whereas all the others were within the rules. But to everyone else it was wrong and unacceptable. That’s what integrity is all about.’

Mr Culhane, who spoke to around 50 local financiers and looked at four genuine ‘integrity’ case studies from the new edition of SII’s book Integrity at Work 2, said promoting trust was one of the organisation’s three main activities, while integrity had four foundations to it: openness, transparency, honesty and fairness.

He said having trust led to confidence and a business gaining a good reputation, while not having it carried a very real cost to the balance sheet as people would eventually stop doing business with an organisation they had ceased to trust.