Reading financial services: texts, consumers, and financial literacy

Abstract, The authors focus upon the changing nature of production and consumption within the retail financial services industry. The perennial problem which faces all producers of financial services is information asymmetry; that is, providers and consumers of financial products have unequal amounts of information about whether or not customers have the wherewithal to make them 'capable* purchasers. Thus, the problem of information asymmetry is usually manifested in a priori decision-making about the suitability of customers. This problem has traditionally been overcome by forging interpersonal relationships of trust with consumers through coprcscncc. Increasingly, however, trust in consumers is being forged through technologically mediated means of information collection functioning 'at a distance * so that financial services producers are coming to 'read * consumers as 'texts', through the medium of databases. These developments have had a number of effects, such as increased competition in retail financial markets, while branch networks, which acted as durable barriers to entry to the market, have become less important as sites of market intelligence and knowledge. Consumers have also been forced to forge new relations of trust with retail financial service providers. This is increasingly being achieved through the use of various media and through identification with brands. Such developments have served to create social and spatial divisions o