One response to the challenges of a global economy from regulators has been a renewed emphasis on knowing your customer.
This is good news for those of us in the business of giving professional advice.
The historical importance of face-to-face meetings may appear obvious.
They have played an important role in the social, and especially the
political life, of Western and non-Western societies. But technology
has changed geographical constraints and made the world a smaller
place. While this brings many opportunities it challenges how well we
can really understand the nature of transactions and advice conducted
remotely.
Face-to-face means we can nurture transparency and trust among each
other in ways that are not always possible in other forms of
communications. The currency of good business is trust. It is an
integral part of business relationships and building trust is a
function of having repeated personal interactions with one another. I
am not saying that trust cannot be built using new media technologies,
but copious research evidence suggests that it takes longer to build.
Through meetings we evaluate and judge the integrity, competencies,
and skills – the value if you like – of others in ways that are not easily
evaluated in electronic media.
Face-to-face allows us to develop strong social relationships. After all, we all want value from all out investments, whether financial or otherwise. Whether it is seeking a sense of value for good work from bosses or colleagues or seeking
validation that the services paid for are indeed worth their cost, face to face communication enhances the added value proposition of a transaction.
We must maintain a balance between a thing-oriented society and a person-oriented society. Policies like knowing your customer ensure we
strike that balance. Globalization and technology challenge this model in so far that it threatens to make the cost of such interactions prohibitively expensive. But the cost of abandoning the human touch, as we are seeing in many courts up and down the land, is likely to be even higher.
Robin Johnson is managing director of Kinleigh Folkard and Hayward Surveyors
