The Transparency Task Force

This is because, rather notoriously, the Financial Services sector is pre-disposed to 'opportunistic obfuscation and opacity'; it has profited from things being kept hidden from the consumer; sometimes deliberately, sometimes not - things like the true costs of investing, the true performance of products and the true risks that consumers sometimes face. 

Opacity leads to asymmetries of information and that's a major concern, because it prevents the consumer being able to make well-informed decisions and thereby stops the market working competitively.

Our Strategy for Driving Change

The Transparency Task Force seeks to operate in a collaborative, collegiate and consensus-building way; focusing on solutions not blame. We seek to effect the change that the financial services sector needs and the consumer deserves.

Our strategy for driving change is to bring together two types of people:

#1, Those with a sense of ‘passion & purpose’ about what needs to be done – such as the thought leader speakers at this event, the ethically-minded financial services professionals, enlightened market participants, pro-consumer campaigners and leading academics who are involved in our community; and

#2, Those with the ‘power & position’ to make change happen – such as the regulators, politicians, financial services leaders, trade bodies and professional associations. 

We are an informal but increasingly influential forum - our strategy for driving change seems to be working very well in the UK and we are looking to become a positive influence internationally, because 'opportunistic opacity and obfuscation' in financial services is a global problem.