Trust vs Credibility: Why Financial Brands Can't Just Talk a Good Game

Episode transcript

Amelia: Hi there, I'm Amelia.

Paul: I'm Paul.

Russ: I'm Russ.

Tonicha: And I'm Tonicha.

Amelia: And this is Fin the Week. We're back for another week — a bit of a change to the advertised episode, because we'd trailed our episode on the EU AI Act. We're going to pick that up later, because today we're delighted to be joined by a new face, Tonicha. Welcome to Indulge and welcome to Fin the Week.

Tonicha: Thanks for having me.

Amelia: So you were saying this is actually your first week in the office.

Tonicha: Yeah, I started at Indulge on Monday, so I've been thrown in the deep end straight onto a podcast.

Amelia: That's how we do it around here. And this week we've actually been inspired by your first article, which took a closer look at our theme this quarter: the trust reset. So we're going to spend some time today unpacking how trust is evidenced, the regulatory backdrop, how credibility and trust aren't really the same thing, and how to contextualise all of this as part of the classic marketing funnel.

So, lots to talk about. Let's kick things off with a couple of big questions. Is trust becoming something you have to evidence? What does evidencing trust even look like? And can a brand still buy credibility with a confident brand voice, or has that stopped working? Any initial thoughts on those two questions?

Tonicha: I think trust is something you have to build over time. But recently, with regulatory changes, it's something that not only our audience is looking for, but regulators too — so evidencing that consistently over time, rather than just putting a claim on a homepage, is a bit of what we'll be talking about today.

Paul: Yeah, and I think the concept of evidencing trust is what inspired the whole theme this quarter, because more so now than ever, firms have to prove what they say. Consumers are savvier — that might be a generalisation, but with access to information online it's so much easier now than it's ever been to validate claims. It's also easier to be duped, I suppose, but people are conscious of that, and I think they're naturally wary of big claims. That means firms really have to back up what they say. We'll get into it in a minute, but you've got SDR — the Sustainability Disclosure Requirements — which mean you can't just make throwaway statements about how sustainable you are. You have to keep the receipts and show the evidence.

Amelia: Any thoughts on those initial questions, Russ?

Russ: We've been talking about evidence a lot in the last few podcasts, and you can see the FCA actively intervening in cases where firms are misusing their position providing online services — manipulating users into the kind of insurance they end up with, and around giving consent. There's a big focus on that: dark patterns, and how consent to use your data is obtained and used. Trust is also that ongoing relationship with the brand — it's quite easy to be convinced a firm offers the right products for you, and then further down the line there are hidden fees, or you have a bad experience with their support team, or you end up paying a lot more without realising it. So there are lots of instances where trust isn't being upheld, and I'm kind of talking about consumer duty there as one of the regulations we'll touch on. It'll be interesting to get into that in more detail today.

Amelia: And the reason we're looking at all of this is the regulatory backdrop. What are the key bits of context here?

Paul: When we first set out the plan for this quarter, there were three key regulatory points that felt relevant. You've got consumer duty, which we've obviously discussed at length over the last few weeks, and which turned three last week — which ups the ante for firms to act in good faith when it comes to consumer journeys and consumer understanding. Then you've got the EU AI Act, which we'll dive deeper into over the coming weeks — that's looking at a whole new world of AI and how it interfaces with finance, and what the onus is on firms. I was reading just this morning that under the new rules that have recently come out as part of the EU AI Act, firms now have to flag whenever something is AI-generated — they have to be very explicit about that. That doesn't directly impact the UK, because we're not part of the EU, but it does mean that if your services span Europe, you're in scope. And then you've got the Sustainability Disclosure Requirements, which are all about the claims you make about sustainability. So those three areas come together to put a real onus on companies to prove what they're doing, not just make bold claims.

Amelia: So let's talk about trust versus credibility, because they're not the same thing, are they? How do we define them?

Paul: I'll let you take that one, Tonicha, because you wrote an article the other day —

Tonicha: Yep, yep.

Paul: — and that's what inspired this whole discussion. I thought framing it as credibility versus trust was a really interesting way to pitch it.

Tonicha: The way I'd differentiate the two is that credibility can be earned a lot earlier in the marketing funnel — in those early stages of awareness and interest. You prove your firm is credible by having consistent messaging, a website that's easy to find, and a clear, consistent brand tone of voice, look and feel. Where you'd hinder your credibility is by not being consistent across those different channels — different messaging or tone of voice from one to the next. So credibility is something quite immediate; a consumer can decide pretty quickly whether or not your brand is credible. Trust, though, is earned more slowly, over time — and that's where consumer duty comes in, because if you're actually showing and demonstrating good intentions and outcomes, you can prove that trust is earned over time. Credibility, I think, feeds more into the Sustainability Disclosure Requirements side — you shouldn't be blasting messaging everywhere saying you're sustainable if you can't actually evidence it and aren't meeting the requirements. So the two feed into different parts of the funnel at different times: credibility earlier on, with awareness and interest, and then trust more in consideration and conversion, where you have to evidence everything you're doing and prove you're acting in your audience's best interests.

Russ: Interesting — hearing you explain it, credibility in some ways is easier to fake than actually earning trust.

Tonicha: Yeah.

Russ: In some of the teardowns we've done recently, we've flagged cases where a company has a bold headline — say, some number of people have recommended the service — and there's no methodology explaining how that number came about, or it's buried in the footer, or it's just difficult to find. You go to these firms' websites and you're hit with award badges, Trustpilot-style scores, sometimes just random scores with no visible data source, just to lure you in. Credibility can be faked in that sense. It's the actual relationship with the customer — making sure they receive the service you said they'd receive — that's trust. I remember doing some research once on a platform a bit like Trustpilot that looked at all the customer feedback for a firm, and a big bulk of the issues came once customers were logged into the portal they'd been sold. The front end of the website was really nice, but the actual account portal had loads of bugs and problems, and they couldn't speak to any customer support — which breaches consumer duty, because it should be easy to speak to a human, especially if you're in vulnerable circumstances. That whole trust was broken after they signed up, even though the front-end site was singing its own praises. That kind of credibility gets lost further down the lifecycle of the product.

Tonicha: Yeah, exactly like Russ said — credibility, while it's still really important, is what gets people through the door. Consistent messaging, brand tone of voice, look and feel — that's what makes people click through and visit your website, or first piques their interest, which is why it matters so much at the early stages of the funnel. But what gets people to stick around and keeps that loyalty going is the trust side — making sure what you're promising in all your messaging and adverts is exactly what you're delivering at the end of it. So the two are both really important, but credibility feeds in earlier and trust later down the line.

Paul: It makes me think of the adverts you see on TV for beauty brands or toothpaste, where a dentist says "80% of people said this toothpaste makes your teeth whiter" — and then there's that little greyed-out disclaimer at the bottom saying "based on a survey of 10 people, 8 said it worked." The credibility element is the brand — you recognise a major brand, so they feel credible because they're everywhere. But the trust element isn't necessarily there, because they've fudged the facts. I'd never really thought about credibility and trust as two separate things before, but there's probably room for brands in every sector to lead with trust as a way to build credibility — to say, "we actually ran a real survey, a major survey run by an independent company, and it genuinely showed good results," rather than trying to hoodwink you into thinking it's better than it is.

Tonicha: Customers are increasingly aware of that, like you said, Paul — in adverts, where brands make big claims. That used to entice people to buy a product, but I think that's less and less the case now. People want to see actual evidence behind what brands are saying, and that ties back into regulations like consumer duty: are you actually following through on what you said you'd give the customer? If you are, that's what generates trust. Building that trust early and consistently keeping it is what keeps credibility alive over time, rather than making bold claims you can't match up to.

Paul: Yeah — and it's the same as the examples you picked out in the teardowns for consumer duty, Russ, where you've got a very specific offer. Like the life insurance one that always sticks in my mind — prices from some amount a month, but that's based on the healthiest possible 21-year-old, rather than what you actually are.

Russ: What was really confusing about the life insurance example was that the headline "pay £3 a month" seemed to be worked out differently by each firm we looked at. One firm said £3 a month, with a little asterisk that, when you looked down, said it was based on a 25-year-old non-smoker with no critical illness cover — which sounds ridiculous, why would you have no critical illness cover on life insurance? Then you'd look at another firm and it would be based on a 30-year-old with a different level of cover. It was so random it became completely meaningless. I think a lot of people see through that — these firms are basically fudging the headline offer to draw people in. And with life insurance, you go through that process and end up paying something like £100 a month instead. But you're so locked into the process by that point — the credibility and the headline offer got you through, and then you're trapped, so you just end up paying for it anyway. You've lost trust with the brand, though, so when renewal comes up, you'll always have it in the back of your mind that you need to get out if you can, because it felt too good to be true — and it was, you're probably paying too much — until you find the next offer and go through the whole process again.

It's up to these firms to act in good faith for consumers, to empower them and avoid causing foreseeable harm. And that foreseeable harm is also about price and value — financially, it is causing harm to consumers if they end up paying a lot more than they thought they would. It reminded me of a specific case where the FCA asked a firm to change its settlement practices. Back in, I think, 2025 — so last year — there was a case involving an insurance firm that wasn't paying out enough money to customers for cars that had been written off, to the point where they couldn't actually replace the car they'd had. The FCA had to step in — 270,000 motorists in the UK were affected, and they're receiving £200 million in compensation for historic claims. That's a really good example of someone who probably signed up to that insurance provider having been roped in by the credibility and the headline claims — but when it came to the crunch and they actually needed the money back from the insurer, the payout wasn't enough. That's right at the end of the lifecycle, but it's good to see the FCA stepping in and people getting compensation when that happens.

Paul: I think you can look at this through the lens of an individual firm — how do they build credibility and trust — but it's also industry-wide. I can see why regulators are particularly interested in it, because if too many firms make bold claims based on woolly data or very favourable scenarios, the impact is that consumers as a whole start to assume it's always too good to be true, and that damages the industry overall. Coming back to the toothpaste example — I just don't believe those adverts at all, as a general rule. So even if one came out that was based on a genuine study, I wouldn't notice, because I'd assume it was rubbish. It's the same with the life insurance example — you just assume the example price is based on the perfect scenario, so you end up ignoring it altogether.

Russ: It feels like marketing is like that across the board in general, but in finance, the impact on people's lives is bigger — especially for vulnerable customers who might be in financial distress, have accessibility needs and can't access a complaints form with a screen reader, or who can't even reach these firms at all. I remember one really well-known comparison site that didn't have a phone number — you had to contact them and request one. Even without consumer duty, that's just really poor customer service. I always think about it in other industries too — I go running a bit, and you see these snazzy trainers advertised, with elite athletes wearing them, so carefully marketed that you end up dropping £200 on a pair and it hasn't made you any faster at all. It feels like it's just marketing — but it's so much more dangerous in financial services, because it impacts people's lives much more directly. If I overspend on trainers and don't run any faster, it's not the end of the world — at least they look cool. But it's more dangerous here because of the impact it has.

Tonicha: I think it's important across all industries, definitely, but for financial services specifically, the people we're serving want to see trust and reliability — they want stability, and they want to know their money is in the right places, being looked after, with the appropriate processes followed. So as a financial services firm, being able to demonstrate that every marketing claim and every piece of messaging you're putting out is actually true, and that you'll follow through on it, is what matters most to customers in this space — because the last thing they want is to be working with people who don't actually have their best interests at heart. That's what makes this such an interesting topic for finance specifically.

Amelia: We're obviously all in agreement that credibility and trust are separate things. Do you think firms or brands ever fail because they haven't made that differentiation between the two?

Tonicha: I think brands quite often rely too heavily on their branding, or how things look, and not enough on their messaging. We've touched on this — they'll reach for the big headline stat that looks great in an advert, but long term can't actually demonstrate or rely on it. Over time, you need to be able to prove that if you're putting a big stat or claim in your marketing, you can actually back it up.

Paul: Yeah, and I think the existence of a term like "greenwashing" proves that's the case — I don't have hard examples to hand, but lots of firms across different industries get accused of it: doing or saying things for the benefit of looking sustainable when in actual fact it's just marketing noise. The fact that it's a known term means it does happen, and companies are focusing more on credibility and branding than on substance — which is probably where the trust gap comes from.

Amelia: Sorry, were you going to say something, Russ?

Russ: I could talk about this all day. Greenwashing is fascinating, and quite sad to see. I also wanted to come back to consumer duty — one of the rules is that consumers shouldn't face any barriers to cancelling a contract; it should be as easy to exit as it is to sign up. We often see those dark patterns — whether it's reaching support, making a complaint, or hidden exit fees — that make it much harder to end a service than to start one. I guess firms think that's in their best interest for retention, but it's not in the best interest of the consumer — it's in the firm's. That's where things need to shift. Actually, when it is easy to cancel or switch provider, I've seen people post on LinkedIn congratulating the firm for it — if it's a nice, easy exit, people are much more likely to go back to that company. So firms making it hard for the consumer are actually working against themselves — that's where trust breaks down.

Tonicha: I think as a consumer, if you know from the early stages exactly what you need to do to cancel, and it's clear and easy to find, that in itself builds trust — because it shows the firm has confidence in the product or service they're selling; they're not worried about people being able to back out. It's almost like they know their product is good enough that they don't need to hide behind awkward cancellation policies. That in itself feeds into the trust element too.

Amelia: And Tonicha, you've also taken an interesting angle by looking at all this in line with the classic consumer funnel. Where do credibility and trust begin to feature there?

Tonicha: At the awareness stage, credibility is about the overarching messaging — making sure you're not making bold claims you can't follow through on, and having a consistent brand tone of voice across all your different channels so your brand is recognisable, whether that's out-of-home advertising, LinkedIn, your website or Google Ads. Keeping that consistent is what builds credibility. Slightly later, still within awareness, it's things like: is your site easy to use? Can people find things like cancellation policies before they sign up? Then, further into consideration and conversion, that's where trust comes in — things like thought leadership from experts who know what they're talking about, so you build trust before someone makes their final choice to buy or invest. And once someone has invested in your product or service, it's about the customer support that follows — nurturing that relationship and looking after those customers afterwards, which is where the consumer duty piece comes in too. So that's how the two work together in the funnel — different, but both really important.

Paul: Do you think there's an element where doing the right thing puts a company at a disadvantage? To pick an example from a different industry — airlines. Take Ryanair: they lead with price, and their whole aim is to keep the base price as low as possible, which they achieve by stripping out any useful feature of the ticket. So when you book, you inevitably end up adding baggage and choosing a seat, and before you know it you're paying about the same as you would with an airline like BA — except BA quotes you a price upfront that's more representative of what you'll actually pay. I suspect Ryanair get more bookings as a result of doing it the more disingenuous way. I wonder if that's the same across other industries, including finance — whether you're at a disadvantage by being trustworthy from the start.

Tonicha: I think that works for something like airlines because they're focused so heavily on price, but for financial services, what people really want is stability and security — they're not necessarily always looking for the cheapest option, they're looking for the best service too. So while a cheaper offer might pull a potential customer in the short term, it's far more important for firms to actually evidence what they're claiming — long term, that's what builds repeat customers and loyalty, and people stick around for years. That's a lot more relevant in financial services than for an airline, where you might just book whichever flight is cheapest that day. Once you build a relationship with a finance firm — in Guernsey, say — you're more likely to stick around for years afterwards, which is why it's so important that these firms demonstrate they can do what they claim and evidence that trust to keep customers long term.

Paul: I think it also depends on the type of financial service. Car insurance is an interesting one — because of the growth of comparison sites, I saw a talk by someone in the insurance industry who said they don't like how comparison sites have commoditised insurance: people buy the cheapest option, ignore the features of the product, and often end up with something that isn't really what they need. It's interesting that you're now seeing a few brands — NFU Mutual is one — lead with messaging around the percentage of claims they actually pay out on, which is arguably a better thread to pull on for a consumer, because ultimately you want your insurer there and ready to support you when you need it, rather than just paying the cheapest price you can get.

Russ: It feels like financial services — which is why these regulations exist — have a bigger impact on people's lives than, say, having to pay a bit more for your flight because your luggage didn't fit by two centimetres and the airline upsells you at the gate. You're stuck paying a bit more, but you're still getting from A to B. Whereas with that life insurance example, Paul — if someone didn't have the right cover because they'd been manipulated through the process, or the terms weren't clear, and then they got seriously ill, that could be really damaging for them and their family, not getting the right amount of money as part of a claim. It does feel like the firms doing this badly have hidden processes that aren't clear, at least online. But the whole point of consumer duty is that the terms you're signing up for should be transparent from the start of the product lifecycle. We saw it with mortgage brokers, where it literally said on screen, "fees will be explained and you'll know your obligations at the meeting" — and again, because people are time-poor, you're locked in by that point. You're speaking to the mortgage broker, you find out their admin fees, and you think, "we don't have time for another meeting, we need to move house in a month." But under consumer duty, those costs should be upfront.

It would be really useful — and I'm sure some firms are doing this — to look at all three regulations, the AI Act, sustainability and consumer duty, together across the whole product lifecycle, because the experience would be so much better for the consumer, and the outcome better for the business too. Firms have an obligation now to provide an evidence report at least once a year, and the FCA is really clamping down on that as we move into year three — an evidence report goes from the consumer duty lead to the board, and then gets submitted straight to the FCA as part of the regulation, so it needs to be taken seriously. But it comes back to what you were saying, Paul — do these businesses weigh up the customers and revenue they might lose through poor claims and retention against just how good it is for business, short term, to announce all these things they can't really deliver on? It's against all the regulations, but are they still the ones winning? I'm not sure. They shouldn't be.

Paul: Yeah, it's almost a problem that has to happen, because there are teams within companies whose job it is to bring customers in. So despite whatever they're told about the rules they need to follow, they're always incentivised to make everything sound as good as possible. That incentive drives you to present the perfect scenario — which isn't untrue, but is perhaps misleading. I don't know if there's ever a solution to that, because in fairness to marketing teams, they do have to present the best picture — you can't really expect them to caveat everything and ruin the message.

Tonicha: I think there has been a shift in marketing generally, though. A few years ago, a coffee shop might have said "best coffee in the world" and just run with it. I don't think that works as well now — as consumers, people want the reality of what a company can actually provide, from the early stages, so they know exactly what they're getting. Marketing teams will always want it to sound as great as it can, and that's what they're there for, but the messaging now needs to be a lot more realistic about what a brand can actually deliver. That's where trust comes in, and what makes people stick around — a nice stat is great as long as it's true and you can back it up. That's what keeps customers loyal, rather than moving around to the next cheapest place.

Paul: I'm jumping ahead a bit here, but one of the points in our notes is that audiences experience a brand as one continuous journey, not channel by channel — which is a really interesting way of looking at things I hadn't considered much. It's made me think about influencers too. What are people's views on influencers, or "finfluencers" as they're known in finance? I've been to conferences where one group really dislikes it — it's had a lot of bad press, with people paid to promote financial products in ways that are very misleading, sometimes illegal. But there are also marketing teams doing conference talks who are very much in favour of influencers, vetting them carefully and bringing in people who are genuinely experts — in pensions, say — creating content series on TikTok and so on. Influencers represent a change in how brands market themselves, because a lot of marketing now is about educating customers rather than pushing a promotional pitch. What's people's view on that?

Russ: I think it's just clever marketing, at the end of the day — and you can't deny it works for these firms. Look at it in another context: there's a new Spider-Man film out, and I think its opening weekend grossed the second-highest ever, nearly a billion pounds, just behind Avengers: Endgame. To achieve that, their marketing budget was absolutely enormous, and it clearly worked out for them. From the influencer side, it just gives a brand or service more exposure — it gets the message out there. Where it might be manipulative is if the influencer is using the product in a way that's completely different from a regular person's experience. That's where it becomes unfair, because it's drawing people into a lifestyle they might expect if they sign up — say they're advertising a personal savings account, and there's an influencer on a yacht drinking champagne, hanging out with beautiful people in the sunshine. Sounds lovely — but then you sign up for the product, and the rates are bad, or maybe it's a loan and it's actually a lot worse, and you get hit with a really high APR. If you want to live that lifestyle and take out a big loan or credit card that's actually quite damaging to your life, that's a real misuse of trust by whoever's advertising the product. It really depends on what's being sold, but in that instance it would be a pretty bad thing.

Tonicha: In finance specifically, case studies are really important. Influencers are, in a way, a kind of case study — a way to demonstrate that your product or service does what you say through people who've actually used it and can advocate for it. But the difficulty, like you said, Paul, is that when people are paid to talk about a product, it automatically feels less genuine. One way brands can do this well is by using genuine case studies or testimonials from real customers who actually want to share their opinion, rather than paying people — or, if they are paying people, always disclosing that, which I think is actually a legal requirement now: if you've paid someone to review your product or service, you have to disclose it. Where possible, having real customers who've used the product off their own back and had a good experience is always going to pay off more than paying someone to review it. The difference with an influencer with a large following is obviously reach — you get a lot more people seeing it. But overall, it's a lot more legitimate, and it comes back to that credibility-and-trust distinction: a customer who's used the product off their own back, had a genuinely good experience and is advocating for it is far more trustworthy than someone who's been paid to review it.

Paul: Yeah, and there's also a distinction between different types of influencer — those who are known because they're genuine experts in a relevant subject, and those who are influencers simply because they're famous. It's the difference between having, say, Martin Lewis educating your customers about life insurance on behalf of your brand, versus a reality TV star talking about a policy or investment product they've just bought. That difference is really what lets you judge how credible and trustworthy it is.

Amelia: And I suppose a lot of that comes down to your trust in that specific person, not just the brand — if it's an influencer selling anything, you've got to trust that influencer to have any chance of them selling the product to consumers.

Russ: Another space in finance that's really quite scary, which we've touched on in previous podcasts, is retail investing. If you've got a wealthy celebrity advertising something like Robinhood or eToro, and you associate success with them, that's quite dangerous for a younger or more vulnerable audience — say, someone in financial distress. They see this person and think, "I can sign up for this, I can invest my money too" — when actually it's really hard to make money on those platforms. That's where it gets misused. I can just imagine a billionaire advertising eToro, getting paid a lot of money for it, and the sign-up rate for that platform going through the roof, because people start associating that person's success with investing.

Tonicha: And I think, coming back to your point, Paul, about the vetting process behind influencers — that's really important for brands too. If you're going down the route of using influencers or industry experts to talk about your product, choosing the right people has a big impact on whether your audience will trust you. So it's about being thorough in who you ask, checking whether their audience is the right one for you, whether their audience already trusts them, and then asking them to give an honest review rather than just paying for a glowing one that isn't entirely true. Having a more honest, pragmatic approach to influencer marketing is what builds trust and credibility with the audience.

Paul: Another thing I've been thinking about is that gaining trust can also be achieved through technology. We're a technology company, and looking back at the projects we've worked on, the most successful things tend to be, in the world of mortgages, building a really good mortgage calculator — we've seen that play out a number of times. The reason it works is that it backs up the claims and demonstrates the rates you're advertising. Thinking back to the life insurance example and those headline rates — there's no reason a firm couldn't build a simple interface that lets you test different scenarios, age ranges, health factors and so on, so you're not hiding the numbers — you're being upfront and showing your headline rates with the context included. Technology can play a real role in that.

Russ: Definitely. And I think a big part of the early stage of the funnel, where we're talking about credibility, is being credible to a diverse audience. We haven't talked much about accessibility, but you can improve credibility and gain trust by having an accessible website, accessible web forms, and the correct colour contrast — which benefits the user, because they can access your website through their usual means, but is also important for firms who want to be credible to a diverse range of customers. Just putting in place some simple accessibility best practice on a website — and we've seen this fail so many times; I think half of everything we found in the teardowns was accessibility issues, and it's not that difficult to implement the basics. It's important, and it's aligned with consumer duty too — it sits somewhere between credibility and trust, because it makes a firm appear credible, but it's also genuinely gaining the trust of vulnerable customers by having an accessible website. That would make a firm stand out against others that aren't doing it well. There's ways to comply with regulation and stand out as the best firm at the same time — because there always seems to be some manipulative headline or influencer trying to grab your attention, and, like you were saying, Tonicha, people see through it. If a brand just honestly explained what you get, end to end, with honest reviews, at a decent price, people might even pay more for that, because they know what they're going to get.

Tonicha: And I think the point Paul made about the technology behind mortgage calculators, or having really clear quotes, is really important to consumers these days. A few years ago you could maybe get away with saying "we're the cheapest" or "competitive market rates," however you want to word it — but actually being able to evidence that before someone buys your product or service feeds right into this whole discussion. That's exactly what builds the retention and customer base that keeps coming back to you over other options, because people can test out the product or service before they buy, and they know exactly what they're going to pay and what to expect.

Russ: I'm much more likely to take a recommendation from someone I know who's used something before than from a video on some platform that sounds too good to be true. And I think if firms don't retain customers and build that word of mouth, their brand gets damaged long term. You'll probably find the brands that stick around the longest, and are the most successful, are the ones that get that side of things right.

Amelia: That might be a good place to leave it — but as always, a really interesting discussion. Tonicha, thank you so much for sparking this conversation. Presumably people can read your article on the website?

Tonicha: Yeah, this should be published alongside the article, so hopefully people will be able to read the two together.

Amelia: Definitely go and check that out — and perhaps one of your future articles will spark another podcast topic for us. Before we go, we'll play a bit of Jargon Busters. Do you know how this works, Tonicha?

Tonicha: I saw it on the brief, but I've not done it before, so I'll give it a go.

Amelia: Basically, we've got a list of industry terms and jargon, and I put you to the test to see if you can work out or explain the definition. This week's term is diversification. What do we reckon — diversification?

Paul: I'll give it a crack. I think it's in the world of investments — diversifying your portfolio. Buying different types of assets and keeping yourself diversified so you're not at risk of a catastrophic drop in one single area. Not putting all your eggs in one basket, I suppose is the way to put it.

Amelia: Russ, anything to add to that?

Russ: Yeah, that's what I was thinking — diversification across your investment portfolio. So you'd have some bonds, some stocks, some commodities, maybe some ETFs — just that kind of spread-it-out approach.

Amelia: Tonicha, anything different?

Tonicha: I didn't immediately think of investments — I assumed it meant getting your product or service out there in as many different ways as possible, keeping it accessible to as many different people as possible. But I suppose that applies to investments too — making sure you've covered all your bases and, like Paul said, not putting your eggs in one basket.

Amelia: That was a nice way of explaining it, Paul. So, it's spreading investments across various assets to reduce risk. Well done — another one in the bag. I think I'm going to have to make it a bit harder next week, you've all been doing too well recently. We'll have more Jargon Busters next week — back next Friday. Thank you so much for listening. Tonicha, thanks for joining us for the podcast — hopefully we'll see you again.

Tonicha: Thank you for having me. It's been great to join.

Amelia: Thanks, guys.

Paul: Cheers!

Tonicha: Thanks.