Despite Rise in Digital Finance, Confidence Has Not Kept Pace, New Bridgforte Report Reveals

The Bridgforte Centre for Global Impact has launched its flagship policy report, ‘Trust Architecture in Platform-Led Finance,’ introducing a new framework for understanding how trust is built, sustained and governed in increasingly interconnected digital financial systems.
Launched through a global online dialogue joined by more than 400 participants, including central bankers, regulators, financial institutions, fintech leaders, consumer advocates, researchers and development partners, the report argues that the next phase of financial inclusion will depend not only on expanding access but on strengthening confidence across the financial ecosystem.

The scale of that challenge was quantified during the research. Senior leaders convened at Bridgforte’s Executive Table in Lagos in February scored the resilience of trust in Nigeria’s platform-led financial ecosystem at 5.4 out of 10.

Polled independently at this week’s launch, participants arrived at a strikingly similar 5.7, suggesting a broad consensus that while digital finance has scaled, confidence has not kept pace.

Delivering the keynote address, Deputy Governor Nomfundo Tshazibana of the South African Reserve Bank described trust and confidence as economic infrastructure, emphasising that resilient financial systems are built through credible institutions, sound governance, effective collaboration and continually earned public confidence.

Explaining why the task of building confidence extends beyond any single institution, Aishah N. Ahmad, CFA, OFR, Founder of Bridgforte and former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, said in a statement accompanying the release:

“Customers do not experience individual institutions. They experience the financial system as a whole, and in increasingly interconnected financial systems, trust is built or broken in the handoffs between institutions. Trust is not a communications exercise. It is a governance outcome, and it must be deliberately designed.”

The Bridgforte Trust Architecture Framework proposes five mutually reinforcing pillars through which systemic confidence is produced: Infrastructure Integrity,

Institutional Accountability, Technology Governance, Ecosystem Coordination and Cultural Confidence
The pillars operate across three relational axes, between consumers and institutions, between institutions themselves, and between regulators and institutions.

The pillars describe the structural conditions that produce confidence; the axes describe where trust is experienced, tested and broken in practice.
Drawing on research, executive dialogue and practitioner engagement, the report finds that the determinants of confidence are operational as much as technological: transaction reliability and dispute resolution ranked as the strongest drivers of trust among the leaders consulted, and people judge financial systems most decisively at the moment those systems fail. Strengthening confidence therefore requires coordinated action across the whole financial ecosystem rather than improvement by any single institution.

As the next phase of this work, Bridgforte announced the establishment of the Trust Lab, a long-term programme of research, dialogue and measurement.
Ahmad told participants that trust deserves the same sustained attention from senior leaders as financial stability and financial inclusion, a body of work rather than a topic of discussion, and the Trust Lab is designed to carry it: deepening understanding of how trust in platform-led financial systems is built, weakened and restored.

The Bridgforte Centre for Global Impact is an independent policy research and convening institution dedicated to strengthening trusted, resilient and inclusive financial systems across Africa and the Global South. Working at the intersection of research, policy and practice, it addresses emerging governance questions, convenes senior leaders across institutional boundaries and develops practical frameworks that help institutions navigate major transitions.