The relationship between corporate reputation and risk in financial intermediaries 1

Corporate reputation is an intangible resource that is becoming increasingly more crucial for the success of firms. The strategic value of the reputational asset is particularly important for the service industry. If the choice of assets by consumers is predominantly based on the qualities that can be evaluated during the pre-purchase stage, the choice of services, among which financial services, is more strongly based on the qualities of experience (which can only be evaluated after purchase) and trust (Munari, 1988). Since reputation conditions the trust of the depositors, corporate reputation is a fundamental factor for financial intermediaries (Locatelli and Schena, 2009). For the latter, recovering the competitiveness lost following the recent financial crisis necessarily presupposes recovering reputation.