Quantitative Assessment of Trust: Evidence from Russian Banking Sector

Trust is a vital feature for the banking business. Surveys and opinion polls as a rule form the informational basis for making trust assessments. A drawback of such approach is the possibility of obtaining erroneous results due to non-representative samples, emotional conditions of the respondents, dominant public moods, and other subjective factors. The general purpose of this study is to develop and test a complex methodology of trust assessment, using evidence from the Russian banking sector. Proposed trust index (I-Trust) is based on the quantitative data reflecting trust towards banks among five groups of stakeholders. The weighting factors for each indicator result from a survey among 457 experts. According to them, the most significant trust signals are the increase of uninsured deposits, the growth of total bank deposits, as well as the increase in the number of digital bank accounts. The calculations demonstrate a rising trend of the trust index for almost the entire period examined (2014-2019). A slight decrease of the index in 2018 may be due to the negative impact of the anti-Russian sanctions on the investors' trust towards banks and interbank market conditions.