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Consumers Trust Robots For Surgery Over Savings, Research Finds (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader shares an article: Andy Maguire faces a challenge: tasked with upgrading HSBC's digital-banking systems, he has discovered that customers are twice as likely to trust a robot for heart surgery than for picking a savings account. "I do find it slightly odd," said the chief operating officer of Europe's largest bank, referring to its survey of more than 12,000 consumers in 11 countries published this week. Just 7 percent of respondents would trust a robot with their savings, versus the 14 percent willing to submit to a machine for heart surgery. "You think, gosh, one would've imagined the world had moved on further or was moving faster than that," Maguire said in an interview. While consumers tend naturally to trust medical professionals, the "bar is pretty high" for banks dealing with people's money, he said. Banks around the world are spending billions of dollars to bolster creaking computer systems in a push to ward off startup competitors and cut long-term operating expenses. But consumers and regulators are holding them to ever-higher standards of security and convenience, driving the cost of overhauls higher and potentially eroding any savings.
People don't "naturally" trust medical professionals. It's learned behavior acquired in societies where we see decades of the medical profession being policed and bitch slapped when they step out of line by more than a medium amount ... and also see decades of the financial profession getting away unscathed after literally causing global catastrophes.
When HSBC gets put out of business after the next time they launder billions in criminal funds, then we'll talk about starting to trust the financial industry.