is not just bankers who have suffered a loss of public trust. in varying degrees, this is also true of big business, government and, yes, politicians and central banks. these lessons for bankers may be relevant to some of us in this room too. the role of finance in society let me start by discussing why closing the trust deficit in finance matters to the economy and to society. whisper it quietly, but a large and well - functioning financial sector is an essential foundation for a growing and well - functioning economy. that is not an ideological assertion from the financial elite ; it is an empirical fact. most of the time and in most countries, finance is a growth - booster not a growth killer. 4 the economic textbooks do not get everything right, but on this they are clear and compelling. banks and capital markets help finance investment by companies. and that, we know, is the seed - corn of future growth. 5 they also help insure against risk by companies and households. and that, we know, is the seed - corn of stability. 6 in a nutshell that is why, over long periods of time and across wide ranges of countries, well - functioning finance has supported wealth - creation and well - being. the other, more obvious, way of capturing why finance matters is to see what happens when it goes wrong. then it can quickly take large chunks out of the capital our societies have, over time and at great cost, painstakingly accumulated. that crumbling of capital, in its broadest sense, is the reason financial crises have been about as costly as any event societies have ever faced historically, war and revolution excepting. capital, for these purposes, has more than one face. the collapse of capital during financial crises shows up, most obviously and immediately, in measures of financial capital ( the values of bonds and shares ) and physical capital ( the accumulation of buildings, houses, plant and machinery ). and because we assign monetary values to these concepts, and obsess about them in the media, these losses of capital are clear and visible. yet it is another form of capital that may matter every bit as much to wealth and well - being in society – social capital. there is neither a standard definition, nor a simple means of measuring, social capital. in general, social capital refers to the relationships, trust and carney ( 2015 ). for example, levine ( 2005 ) and beck ( 2012 ). there is also evidence finance fosters entrepreneurship ( gui

information - content. chart 3 plots six metrics of linguistic complexity, as applied to the annual reports of the four largest uk banks. 62 it compares them with a series of alternative publications, specifically a uk broadsheet newspaper, a uk tabloid newspaper, a set of recent bank of england reports, a selection of my own speeches, and a selection of speeches by the leaders of the uk ’ s main political parties. these comparators have no significance beyond the fact that they are examples of material written for a general audience. what this demonstrates is that banks ’ annual reports rank highly on the linguistic complexity scale, well above even a broadsheet newspaper. that means they are unlikely to be accessible to the vast majority of the general public. it is communication among the financial elite in the language of the financial elite. perhaps that is no more than confirmation of what we already knew. nonetheless, it means these communications are, by themselves, unlikely to have helped build, or rebuild, generalised trust in banking. it also begs the question of what more could be done to make banking more accessible to the wider public to help build trust. one option might be for the banking industry to conduct events similar in spirit to the open forum – events which seek to engage with, and take messages from, the general public. these might be one means of accreting personalised trust with customers – “ trust town halls ”. to be successful, these would need to be repeated rather than one - off events, as personalised trust arises from repeat interactions. another idea is to consider whether there was scope for something akin to an annual report for customers, rather than investors. this might be ( considerably ) shorter in length, ( considerably ) simpler in language and ( considerably ) easier to digest in a 5 minute sitting. it would be part of banks ’ contract, social rather than legal, with their customers. a third idea shannon ( 1948 ). dubay ( 2004 ). these include the coleman−liau, ari, smog, gunning fog, flesch−kincaid and coleman correct completion measures. these measures consider not only sentence length but also the number of polysyllables ( words of three syllables or more ) and the average number of syllables per word. bis central bankers ’ speeches might be for banks in future to begin publishing self - assessments of their culture, so that customers could have some better sense of the progress being made. if these are important communications lessons for financial