Personality Becomes Finance’s Strongest Market Asset.
Financial Brands Prove Identity Drives Perception, Trust, and Rank.
A Sector Recast By Identity
The FutureBrand Financial Services 2025 study, based on interviews with over 3,000 informed professionals across 17 countries conducted in June 2024, confirms a profound shift. Financial Services brands, long synonymous with faceless solidity, are no longer competing on compliance alone. Personality has become their hardest asset.
The numbers are unambiguous. Personality rose +69% across FS brands over the past decade, compared to a +47% global average. This is not decoration or marketing veneer. It is a measurable differentiator, converting brand expression into capital advantage in a category once defined by undifferentiated products.
This identity pivot sits alongside other surging attributes: Story up 66%, Inspiration up 77%, and Pleasure up 74%. Collectively, they show a sector recasting itself as expressive, human, and relatable, not merely functional.
From Crisis To Credibility
The context makes these gains more striking. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, trust in banks collapsed, and identity was reduced to sameness and silence. The decade since has been a deliberate investment in brand: rebuilding respect, embedding purpose, and demonstrating innovation that strengthens rather than destabilizes.
While tech companies chased disruption, often at the expense of credibility, FS brands built a different playbook. They used regulation, security, and transparency as foundations, and layered identity on top. The result: FS brands now outperform tech on trust in data responsibility, overtaking companies that once claimed innovation as their domain. Tech’s Innovation score grew just 6% in the decade. FS? +76%.
This credibility sets the stage for personality to become not just possible but powerful. Customers are more willing to accept expressive, distinctive voices from institutions they now trust to act responsibly.
Identity Engineered Into Systems
The study captures how leading FS brands have translated identity into execution.
Visa reintroduced itself through the “Meet Visa” campaign, expanding beyond payments into a lifestyle and business platform. Its embrace of biometrics and cybersecurity investments added weight: expression matched with assurance.
American Express amplified its “Shop Small” initiative, linking its brand personality to community support and small-business resilience. It became more than a network; it positioned itself as a driver of SME recovery and loyalty.
Bank of America built its digital ecosystem into an everyday financial companion, powered by its AI assistant Erica, recasting the bank as a daily presence in customers’ lives.
JPMorgan Chase committed $17 billion to technology in 2024, rolling out the Wealth Plan app and an AI-powered suite for wealth managers. What once sounded like scale now carried the positioning of technology leadership and future-readiness.
Royal Bank of Canada aligned its identity with social impact through initiatives in environment, youth, and wellbeing, making expression inseparable from values.
China Construction Bank and Agricultural Bank of China climbed 41 and 34 places respectively in the PwC Top 100, in part because their brand strategies aligned with national agendas around sustainability and inclusion.
These examples show personality is not an aesthetic exercise. It is rooted in deliberate choices that tie technology, purpose, and cultural expression into a coherent brand identity.
Personality As Economic Weapon
The data confirms that identity investments are translating into measurable advantage. Alongside the leaps in expressive attributes, FS brands also gained in Respect, Authenticity, and Trust, reinforcing that distinctiveness does not come at the cost of credibility.
The biggest movers in global ranking underscore the point. China Construction Bank rose to #16, Agricultural Bank of China to #20, and Bank of America to #54. Their financial performance matters, but the FutureBrand Financial Services 2025 analysis isolates perception as the decisive layer: they are seen as distinct, credible, and human. That perception strengthens intent to buy from them and to work for them, two critical levers of growth.
By contrast, technology firms that once dominated the perception race are now constrained by scepticism. Amazon, Meta, and others wrestle with accusations of unchecked power.
FS brands, by building personality on a foundation of trust, have inverted the competitive dynamic.
Why Personality Matters Now
In a sector where products converge and technology diffuses quickly, price and utility are no longer durable differentiators. Digital wallets, payment apps, and AI assistants can be copied. What cannot be commoditized as easily is the sense of voice, identity, and cultural expression that personality delivers.
Customers notice. Personality, story, and inspiration are not soft metrics; they are signals that drive preference in crowded markets. They are also signals of resilience: brands that feel human retain loyalty even under pressure, because customers perceive them as more than interchangeable service providers.
The rise of Personality, Pleasure, and Story is therefore not incidental. It is a defense against commoditization and a strategy for compounding equity.
Bottom Line: Neutrality Commoditizes.
The FutureBrand Financial Services 2025 proves that personality compounds value. Financial brands that invest in identity are not chasing vanity metrics. They are building measurable market advantage. Distinct voice now decides intent, loyalty, and rank. In a sector where sameness once defined strength, expression has become the hardest asset.
