The Customer in the Boardroom

Pick up virtually any corporate annual report and you’ll read that “customers are at the centre of what we do”. And no Values Statement seems complete without talking about how we treat customers. And yet…how often is “The Customer” discussed in the boardroom? Or the impact on the customer considered explicitly in board papers?

In the financial services sector, a heavy regulatory emphasis on conduct towards customers has helped. But that’s only one angle, and that board-level focus is far from universal practice. Here we make a few suggestions on how to change the focus – and highlight the traps to avoid.