British banks are among the world's best corporate communicators,
according to a survey of international financial journalists.
The findings show 67 per cent of business journalists quizzed said they
felt British banks provided good or excellent corporate information -
ranking third just behind the US and Swiss, with 69 per cent and 68 per
cent respectively.
But the study, compiled by Fishburn Hedges (FH) and its global affiliate
network GFC/Net, found only 57 per cent of British financial journalists
felt banks were good at understanding their needs.
On a global basis, journalists said they considered the banking sector
behind in its approach to transparency, with 69 per cent rating the
accessibility and openness of bank's management as either poor or
average.
FH head of financial comms Andrew Marshall said the research, conducted
late last year, was influenced by the dramatic slowdown in the economy:
'A slower market meant there was more emphasis on communicating any good
news.
'But the flip-side is that there was a lot of bad news with poor results
and redundancies and journalists gave mixed feelings on how well banks
communicated on these issues,' he added.
The findings revealed 59 per cent of journalists felt banks'
communications had improved over the last year.
Japanese banks were singled out for providing an inadequate level of PR
- as little as five per cent of those polled rated corporate
communications from Japanese banks as good.
