This blog is based on, not the exact wording of, my speech at The Banking Scene Conference 2026 Luxembourg, titled “Ethos in Banking: The Choices That Shape Private and Wealth Banking”.

When I wrote “A New Ethos in Banking – Embracing Values and Ethics for a Meaningful Transformation”, people often get stuck at the word “Ethics”, believing my book is a call for banks to do good for the world with clear guidelines on what “good” means. These people should look beyond the title, because they are mistaken.

My intention was never to introduce a new moral framework for banks. It was to describe something far more practical and more fundamental: how institutions are shaped by the choices they make over time, especially when those choices involve real trade-offs.

Over the past year, speaking about the book in different contexts, such as at our 2025 Conference in Luxembourg, I realised that while the core argument has remained unchanged, the point of view has shifted.

The book approaches ethos from the inside out: culture, incentives, behaviour, governance.

The conversations I am having today explore the same idea from the outside in: relevance, trust, and judgment under pressure.It is the same story, but seen from a different angle.

Ethos Was Never About Morality

One reason I might have chosen a different title in hindsight is that ethos is often read as ethics, and ethics as moral judgement.

That was never the intent.

Ethos, as I use it in the book, is not about declaring what is good or bad. It is defined as how an organisation’s, or people’s, interpretation of good and wrong is being translated in their behaviour, how it defines one’s identity or culture.

It is about how decisions are made, which trade-offs are accepted, and which patterns of behaviour emerge over time.

Ethos is not what a bank claims. No, it is what it consistently rewards, tolerates, or avoids.

In that sense, ethos is less about explaining why institutions act as they do, and more about showing how they act in practice, through the patterns of behaviour that emerge from repeated choices over time.

From Internal Coherence to External Relevance

The book largely examines ethos as an internal phenomenon, with an external evaluation. What recent discussions have clarified for me is how directly this connects to a question banks are increasingly confronted with from the outside: relevance.

Private and wealth banking used to benefit from structural relevance. Trust was inherited. Legitimacy was assumed. Scale, balance sheets, and history did much of the work.

That environment is disappearing: today, relevance has become conditional. It needs to be explained, demonstrated, and defended; repeatedly.

From that perspective, relevance is no longer something banks have; it is something they produce, decision by decision, customer contact by customer contact, campaign by campaign.

VDK Bank, for example, has made a deliberate effort to explain relevance rather than assume it. Instead of relying on abstract claims, the bank chose a very tangible and almost pedagogical approach. It created a three-sided coin (approved by the European Central Bank) to illustrate how client deposits are used.

One side represents the return for the client, another the contribution to the local economy, and the third the broader impact on society and the environment. The point is not the object itself, but what it does: it makes visible the trade-offs embedded in everyday banking decisions.

Whether one agrees with every underlying choice is beside the point. What matters is that the bank does not hide behind neutrality or complexity. It makes its logic explicit. Ethos becomes legible. Relevance, in that sense, is not claimed, but argued.

And this is precisely where ethos moves from an internal organising principle to an external differentiator.

Neutrality Revisited

One of the book's arguments is that many banking decisions are presented as neutral or technical, whereas in reality they involve judgment and implicit trade-offs. Recent conversations have only reinforced the importance of that insight.

Private and wealth banking is a judgment-based business: it involves risk selection, client selection, outcome prioritization and so much more.

Is the defence industry categorically excluded from investments, or selectively allowed, and what does that mean to the reputation of a bank? How do organisations ensure customers understand and acknowledge these decisions without harming brand reputation?

These decisions are often framed as technical or procedural. They are not. When banks describe themselves as neutral or purely client-led, what they often mean is that they avoid making certain choices explicit.

But deciding not to decide is still a decision. Neutrality is not the absence of ethos. It is an unarticulated one.

Coherence as a Source of Trust

A central theme of A New Ethos in Banking is that intent is easy, but translation is hard.

The institutions that sustain trust are not necessarily those that make the strongest statements. They are those who behave coherently under pressure.

Coherence means:

• making trade-offs explicit
• aligning incentives with stated intent
• responding to tension in a predictable way

Trust is not built through moments of brilliance; it is built through disciplined consistency over time.

Therefore, ethos, as described in the book, is not a leadership trait. It is a governance responsibility.

Once embedded at that level, trust no longer depends on individuals. It becomes institutional, and institutional trust is the only kind that scales across generations.

Moreover, institutionalising it makes an organisation more agile, as fewer decisions need to be reopened, since everyone is aligned.

Private & Wealth Banking as a Stress Test

Private and wealth banking make these dynamics particularly visible. The intergenerational wealth transfer, changing expectations around legacy, geopolitical uncertainty, and technological acceleration, all expose the limits of purely financial optimisation.

Clients increasingly ask questions that cannot be answered by models alone:

• What is this wealth for?
• How should it endure?
• What responsibilities come with it?

These are not moral questions. They are judgment questions.

And judgment is shaped by ethos.

This is where the book’s conceptual argument meets daily practice. The logic is the same, but the consequences are now more visible and harder to abstract away.

Four Pressures That Make Ethos Visible

What makes private and wealth banking such a useful lens for this discussion is that several structural shifts converge here. Not as abstract trends, but as daily realities that force institutions to make choices, and to live with the consequences.

First, the intergenerational wealth transfer.

This is often discussed in terms of size and scale. But the more profound shift is qualitative. For many next-generation clients, the central question is no longer how to optimise wealth, but what that wealth is for, and what is expected to be done with it. That moves family dynamics, values, and long-term responsibility to the centre of the advisory relationship.

Pure financial optimisation is no longer sufficient as an answer. Advisors are no longer mediators of return optimisation alone; they become interpreters of trade-offs. The way a bank navigates those tensions reveals its ethos: not through statements, but through behaviour.

Second, legacy beyond financial return.

Where return on investment used to dominate the conversation, clients increasingly think in terms of continuity, impact, and how they will be remembered. This is not ideology. It is a reflection of changing expectations around ownership and responsibility. The sustained interest in private markets, long-term assets, and ESG-integrated strategies fits squarely within this shift.

The advisory role evolves accordingly, from performance optimisation to helping clients articulate long-term intent. In an environment where proper advice requires knowledge no single individual can hold, relevance shifts from individual brilliance to institutional coherence and trust follows.

Third, global mobility and resilience.

Private banking has historically associated security with discretion. In a fragmented geopolitical environment: with sanctions, capital controls, regulatory divergence, and sudden regime shifts, secrecy no longer provides protection. Resilience does. Clients increasingly look for robustness: jurisdictional diversification, legal and regulatory clarity, and institutions that remain predictable under stress.

We see another example of how trust shifts away from individuals and towards institutional coherence.

Fourth, technology as an enabler; and a stress factor.

Technology is often framed as a tooling question. In reality, it is a time and clarity question. When administration disappears, time reappears: time for listening, context, and deeper advisory conversations. At the same time, technology raises expectations around transparency, explainability, and consistency.

Speed without ethos creates opacity.

Speed with ethos creates confidence.

The Same Argument, Under Pressure

So when I say that my story has not changed, I mean that literally.

Ethos explains how institutions develop internal coherence.

Relevance explains how that coherence is tested externally.

Ethos shapes choices. Choices shape relevance. From this perspective, ethos is not an internal reflection exercise. It is a condition for sustainable relevance.

Not because it makes banks “good”, but because it makes them legible to clients, employees, regulators, and society.

And in a world where trust is no longer inherited, legibility may be one of the most underestimated strategic assets banks have.

Andrew questions Rik on a few of the snappy soundbites surfaced in the article above, and goes a little off topic by bringing up the Crusaders ........ you'll have to watch below or listen on your favourite podcast platform here to see if you can figure out what he was on about - sometimes we just have to write him off as being a bit too South African for our understanding 😅