Consumers, Finances, Transparency and Trusting the Fine Print

Keep your eye on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, it's taking on the biggest consumer trust issue around - Financial Services. [A nod of thanks to  Lois Beckett  who wrote the insightful summary on the Business Insider. ]

According to Edleman's 2011 Trust Barometer, Financial Services are at the BOTTOM of the trust deck with banks and Insurance companies holding down the bottom with it. 

Who can we thank for bringing this much needed service to protect average citizens from misleading fine print, clauses, mind-numbing legalease -- Elizabeth Warren. She spent 10 months putting her heart and soul into creating this consumer protection agency only to have the job to head this organization handed over to guy I will not name. He didn't earn the kudos, it was Elizabeth Warren who conceived, planted, toiled and launched the agency.

What a shame and a sham -- in business, good ideas are rewarded. In politics they are burned. But I digress...

So how is the agency identifying the where consumers become confused? They turned to technology and letting the crowd of thousands tell them show them what's bugging them.  Thank you!

 

My thanks to Elizabeth Warren, a respected researcher of economic trends and impacts who turned her ideas into action items; and to Lois Beckett for reporting on this baby agency and what it is doing to help protect us against those who we clearly don't trust. Through their efforts to create and inform, and with new transparency, maybe some day we'll trust the money lenders again.