When a bank chooses a core banking provider, it is making a technology decision and accepting a level of business risk.
The bank has to ask difficult questions like Can this company deliver consistently? What happens when something goes wrong? and Will its leaders be available when the stakes are high?
These questions sit at the heart of building customer trust, especially for organisations that provide critical technology or operate in regulated industries.
During a recent appearance on Classic FM’s #BrandsAndU, Dr. Joachim Adenusi, CEO of Peerless, discussed trust, governance, risk management, ethics and transparency. His central point was simple: trust has commercial value, and organisations have to earn it through how they operate.
Here are seven practical lessons business and technology leaders can take from that conversation.
1. Understand the two currencies behind enterprise trust
Dr. Adenusi described two forms of currency in business: performance currency and relationship currency.
Performance currency comes from your ability to deliver. Customers look at your product, reliability, service quality and track record. Relationship currency develops when people trust your organisation enough to recommend it or attach their reputation to it.
For B2B companies, they both matter. A strong product may get you shortlisted. However, large enterprise purchases often involve references, recommendations and extensive due diligence. Buyers want evidence that other credible organisations have trusted you before.
The practical lesson is straightforward: protect the quality of every customer experience. One successful implementation can become the reference that opens another account.
2. Treat governance as part of your commercial infrastructure
Corporate governance often stays in board papers until something goes wrong. That misses its commercial value.
During the interview, Dr. Adenusi explained that customers and partners increasingly examine how organisations are governed before making major commitments. Peerless itself constituted its inaugural Board with independent expertise across areas including risk, finance and law.
For enterprise buyers, strong governance reduces uncertainty. Leaders should therefore ask:
- Who can challenge executive decisions?
- How are major risks reviewed?
- What happens when commercial pressure conflicts with sound judgement?
- Is accountability clear when decisions fail?
Good governance makes these questions easier to answer during procurement and due diligence.
3. Use risk management to make better bets
Risk management should help leaders make informed decisions under uncertainty.
Dr. Adenusi described this as “pricing the yes correctly.” His argument was that avoiding every risk means missing opportunities, while ignoring risk can expose customers and the organisation to serious consequences.
Before approving a major product, technology or market decision, ask:
- What could realistically go wrong?
- Who would be affected?
- What controls reduce the probability?
- How quickly would we detect failure?
- Can we recover without unacceptable customer impact?
With a tool like ConradRP, businesses can manage this from one central point. This approach is especially useful in financial infrastructure, where poor decisions can affect transactions, access to funds and regulatory obligations.
4. Put ethical controls where decisions happen
Policies matter, but employees ultimately operate through systems and processes. That means organisations should translate important ethical principles into practical controls. For example, this could include role-based permissions, approval workflows, transaction rules, audit trails and access restrictions.
Dr. Adenusi’s point was that ethical guardrails become stronger when they are built into the way the organisation operates. Mizan, Peerless’s purpose-built digital banking core for Islamic and non-interest financial institutions, provides a practical example. Its product architecture removes interest logic from the ledger, requires products to map to valid Islamic contracts, and applies Sharia controls across product, transaction and general-ledger levels.
The broader lesson applies well beyond banking: identify the behaviours your organisation considers unacceptable, then determine where systems can prevent them before they occur.
5. During a crisis, communicate before silence fills the gap
Most organisations eventually face a service issue, failed project, customer complaint or public mistake. Trust often depends on what happens next.
Dr. Adenusi emphasised quick acknowledgement, clear explanation and stronger performance after the incident. He argued that silence can worsen uncertainty because affected stakeholders may already know something has happened.
A practical crisis response should therefore answer:
- What happened?
- Who is affected?
- What are we doing about it?
- When will the next update come?
- What will prevent a repeat?
Once the immediate issue passes, consistent performance becomes part of rebuilding confidence.
6. Make transparency visible in the customer experience
Transparency should extend beyond corporate communications. Customers experience transparency through how clearly your organisation explains decisions, reports performance and handles problems.
A technology provider can publish uptime and service metrics. A bank can explain why a transaction failed. A regulated organisation can maintain audit records that make important actions traceable. As Dr. Adenusi put it during the interview, transparency becomes meaningful when stakeholders can understand how the organisation actually works.
This is particularly important when customers cannot easily inspect the underlying technology themselves. Clear evidence reduces the amount of trust they have to place in marketing claims alone.
7. Use AI to improve judgement without surrendering it
Dr. Adenusi also discussed Peerless Pulse, an internal project that used AI across planning, development, testing and documentation.
As he explained, the team estimated that AI reduced the delivery cycle from an expected 10 to 14 weeks to 30 calendar days, while 232 automated quality checks were incorporated into the product. Human team members remained responsible for decisions.
That distinction matters because AI can help teams research faster, surface options, identify inconsistencies and automate repetitive work, but leaders still need to own decisions involving ethics, customer consequences, risk appetite and strategic trade-offs.
The best use of AI is therefore to improve the quality and speed of human judgement, while keeping accountability clear.
Trust has to exist before Marketing can communicate it
Strong branding can help people understand an organisation. It cannot compensate indefinitely for weak governance, poor service or unpredictable performance.
For businesses selling critical technology, building customer trust starts much deeper. It sits in board oversight, engineering decisions, risk controls, customer support and the way leaders communicate when pressure rises.
That was the most useful takeaway from Dr. Joachim Adenusi’s conversation. Build the operating discipline first. Then your brand has something credible to say.
