Trust is elusive. You’re either trusting, earning trust or losing trust. It can be earned, it can be cultivated and it can be lost. Some trust easily, others not so much. However you look at giving or getting trust, the fact that “trust” appears in one form or another on virtually every organization’s list of values is one of the clearest indications of its importance. After all, who does business with someone they don’t trust? And who can work openly with a team member they can’t trust? Organizations and individuals recognize its importance, but how do you build and sustain something as subjective and dynamic as trust? Adding to the complexity, trust is an outcome, something we develop and build based on factors revealed in the stories that follow.
An Island Surprise
Among the many measures of success for a financial services company is the “Forbes Top Performing Banks” byForbes Magazine. As you can imagine, ranking high in the top 100 is a coveted spot matched with a sweet set of bragging rights for those firms fortunate enough to reach those heights.
The competition is fierce and the metrics of asset quality, capital adequacy and profitability of the 100 largest publicly traded banks and thrifts are reviewed and judged with cold precision. If a bank does achieve this distinction, it would be unusual for it to reap the reward of a high ranking twice in a row. Three times would be remarkable, and four… well now you’re just being ridiculous. Oh, and did we mention this was 2009-2012, which has come to be known as the worst financial crisis in U.S. history?
In the heat of the meltdown, one bank maintained its first or second place ranking out of the 100 top performing financial institutions for four years. This was not a money center bank in New York, Chicago or Los Angeles. It was not a large regional bank in Texas or another area of the country which wasn’t as negatively impacted by the recession. This was an island bank in the city of Honolulu.
The Bank of Hawaii opened for business with $400,0
