Our Manifesto: Why Trust Matters

Leo writes: Picture this: You're at a restaurant in London or Vancouver. The bill arrives. You hand over your credit card. The server takes it away, processes the payment, and returns it. You never think twice. Now imagine doing this in São Paulo, Mexico City, or Karachi. The server disappearing with your credit card? Unthinkable. Instead, they bring a payment terminal to your table. You maintain physical control at every moment. I know this intimately. I was born in Brazil. This seemingly small difference (who holds the card) reveals something profound about how societies function. It's not about paranoia. It's about rational adaption to different levels of social trust. And this trust is the invisible foundation upon which prosperity is built.

Why This Matters Now

High-trust societies such as the UK, Ireland, Canada, and the United States didn't achieve their prosperity by chance. They developed something rare and precious: the ability to trust strangers. To cooperate with people you've never met. To believe that others will honour their commitments without constant monitoring. The data is stark. When asked "generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted?":

🇨🇦 Canada: 70% say yes
🇬🇧 United Kingdom: 60% say yes
🇺🇸 United States: 58% say yes
🇧🇷 Brazil: 7% say yes
🇲🇽 Mexico: 17% say yes
🇵🇰 Pakistan: 2% say yes

This isn't just a number. The seven-times difference in trust rates translates directly into economic reality. High-trust societies enjoy 20-30% lower transaction costs. You can leave your laptop in a library. Contracts can be shorter. Business moves faster. Public services function better. Low-trust societies pay an invisible tax on everything. Every transaction needs elaborate security. Every agreement requires extensive verification. Family businesses dominate because trust doesn't extend beyond kingship networks. Economic potential remains forever constrained.

The Threat: Trust is Declining in the West

Here's what should alarm everyone who values Western prosperity: trust is collapsing even in historically high-trust societies. The United States tells the story clearly:

1972: 46% of American trusted others
2007: 58% (the peak)
2018: 34%
2025: 34% (the lowest in five decades)

The UK experienced a 10-percentage-point drop in government trust in just two years (2021-2023). Canada's trust in government plummeted from 58% to 43% between 2020-2022, a 15-point collapse in 24 months. Most concerning: Young people trust far less than older generations. In Sweden, only 53% of under-30s trust others versus 77% of those over 50. In the United States, Gen Z shows institutional trust below 15% for Congress, media, and the presidency. This pattern repeats across every developed nation surveyed. Each generation is less trusting than the one before. The trajectory is clear and troubling.

What Destroys Trust

Social media has accelerated polarisation dramatically. NYU's review of 50+ studies found social media "exacerbates" division through algorithm amplification. We unknowningly sort ourselves into isolated networks, consuming information that confirms existing beliefs whilst avoiding uncomfortable truths. Economic inequality erodes the shared experience that builds trust. When societies fracture into distinct economic classes, people trust only those similar to themselves. The middle ground, where different groups once mixed, disappears. Political polarisation both causes and reflects trust decline. When citizens view the opposing party as "a danger to the country," cooperation becomes impossible. Shared facts disappear. Everything becomes tribal. The result? Robert Putnam documented this in "Bowling Alone:" Americans have withdrawn from civic life. Volunteering fell from 28.8% in 2002-2005 to just 23.2% by 2021, the lowest in nearby two decades. We no longer join clubs. We don't attend public meetings. We bowl alone rather than in leagues. The fabric is fraying.

Brazil Shows What Happens When Trust Collapses

Only 7% of Brazilians believe most people can be trusted, among the five lowest trust rates globally. I've lived this reality. The consequences extend far beyond credit card practices:

In payments: Mexico still processes 80% of transactions in cash despite widespread banking access. Brazil needed its government to create Pix, a domestic instant payment system, because Brazilian trust neither foreign nor domestic credit card companies enough to adopt digital payments.
In business: Companies must invest heavily in security, verification systems, and monitoring. These resources cannot be used productively. Estimates suggest this "trust tax" reduces growth potential by 20-30%.
In daily life: Over 40% of Brazilian workers remain in the informal sector, partly because they distrust formal institutions and outdated labour laws. Tax evasion becomes widespread when citizens believe the government will waste or steal their contributions, which is true in recent history.

The historical roots run deep. Brazil inherited extractive colonial institutions designed for exploitation rather than development. Slavery, lasting until 1888, last in the Americas, created rigid social hierarchies. Academic research shows regions with historically high slavery levels exhibit 18% lower trust today. The trauma transmits across generations since the slavery's end, which was also the cause of the end of the Brazilian Empire. The military dictatorship (1964-1985) further damaged institutional trust through 21 years of repression. Then came Lavo Jato, the Car Wash corruption scandal, which initially seemed to promise accountability but ultimately revealed corruption across the entire political spectrum. When the investigation itself became politicised, Brazilians learnt a bitter lesson: you need to be blind to corruption to survive, or you can't trust anyone. The result is a term I personally hate, "jeitinho brasileiro," or the culture practice of creatively bending rules. Whilst sometimes celebrated as 'resourcefulness,' jeitinho perpetuates distrust. When everyone expects others to circumvent rules through personal connections, formal institutions become irrelevant. Trust concentrates within families and close networks. Everyone outside that circle is suspect. This is the low-trust equilibrium. And it's extraordinarily difficult to escape.

Trust in Relationships: The Most Intimate Test

Nowhere does trust matter more than in romantic partnerships. Yet even here, we see the pattern repeating: trust is declining, and the consequences are severe. Money is the most dangerous topic in relationships. Kansas State University research analysing over 4,500 couples found financial arguments are strongest predictor of divorce, stronger than disagreements about children, sex, or in-laws. THis holds true across all income levels. The data reveals why:

Financial conflicts are more pervasive, problematic, and recurrent than other disagreement types.
They last longer, as their effects, and remain unresolved despite more problem-solving attempts.
They involve harsher language and create lasting resentment.

Financial secrecy poisons relationships systematically. Research shows 43% of Americans who have ever combined finances admit to financial deception, hiding purchases, accounts, debt, or income. Among those who commit financial infidelity, 85% say it affected the relationship: 42% caused arguments, 32% led to less trust, 16% led to separate or divorce. Gen Z shows 67% financial infidelity rates. Millennials: 54%. Gen X: 33%. Baby Boomers: 30%. The youngest generations, digital natives who should find transparency easiest, instead exhibit the highest rates of financial dishonesty with partners. Joint financial management predicts relationship success. Couples with joint savings accounts report 94% marital satisfaction versus just 82% with only personal accounts. Multiple peer-reviewed studies confirm this correlation. Most compellingly, experimental evidence from Northwestern University shows causation: newlyweds randomly assigned to joint accounts maintained relationship quality over two years whilst those with separate accounts showed significant declines. Yet modern couples increasingly keep finances separate. Only 16% of cohabiting couples share accounts versus 77% of married couples. Millennials and Gen Z are making financial choices that predictably undermine relationship stability. The parallel to societal trust is exact: Just as societies need to trust strangers for economic prosperity, couples need to trust partners for relationship success. Both are declining simultaneously.

Why the UK, Ireland, Canada, and the US Must Protect Their Trust Culture

These nations represent something precious and rare in human history: societies where strangers cooperate reliably, where institutions function with relative integrity, where you can hand your credit card to a server without fear. This didn't happen by accident. It emerged from:

Centuries of institution-building creating predictable bureaucracies, especially in the UK and Ireland.
Democratic traditions with peaceful power transfers, especially throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.
Professional civic services based on merit rather than patronage.
Strong civic associations connecting citizens beyond family bonds.
Rule of law applied consistently across social classes.

Francis Fukuyama called this "spontaneous sociability," the ability to form new associations and cooperate based on shared ethical values rather than contracts or kingship. This enables large professionally managed enterprises, efficient markets, and effective public goods provision. But spontaneous sociability is fragile. Once lost, it takes generations to rebuild, if it can be build at all. Brazil's experience shows how quickly trust can collapse. Argentina, once among the world' wealthiest nations in the early 20th century, demonstrates how institutional failure can squander enormous natural advantages. The pattern repeats across Latin America: natural resources, young populations, strategic locations, but constrained prosperity because trust never developed. The West cannot assume its trust culture is permanent. The data shows it's already eroding rapidly. Each generation trusts less than the previous one. Social media fragments shared reality. Inequality creates distinct lived experiences. Political polarisation destroys common ground. If trust continues declining in the UK, Ireland, Canada, and the US, they will converge towards Brazil's reality rather than Brazil converging towards theirs.

Trust Begins in Relationships

I believe trust in society starts with trust in our most intimate relationships. If couples cannot be transparent about money, if they hide accounts, lie about debt, maintain fully separate financial lives whilst claiming partnership, how can we expect broader social trust? Modern relationships aren't static. They evolve through stages:

Roommates splitting bills
Dating couples sharing occasional expenses
Cohabiting partners with intertwined finances
Married couples building shared futures and long-term investments

Yet banking forces a binary choice: fully separate (manual splitting, constant friction, endless spreadsheets) or fully joint (all-or-nothing, complete loss of autonomy and privacy.) Real relationships live in the middle. They need progressive financial integration that grows with trust.

The plan/ria Vision

We're building the first relationship-centred financial platform designed to evolve with couples, protecting and promoting trust at society's core foundation. Our principles:

Trust through transparency: Progressive disclosure that lets partners share what they're comfortable with, when they're comfortable with it. Account linking. Fair-split algorithms. Joint savings goals. But always with boundaries that partners control.
Trust through fairness: Income-proportional splits. Equal percentage contributions. Shared decision-making. No partner feels exploited or controlled.
Trust through evolution: Financial integration that starts small (one shared bill) and grows as relationships deepen. From roommates to long-term partners to marriage, plan/ria adapts.
Trust through privacy: Some finances remain private because healthy relationships include autonomy. plan/ria never forces total merger unless couples choose it together.
Trust through simplicity: Open Banking makes it automatic. No more awkward conversations about who pays what. No more spreadsheet maintenance. NO more financial friction destroying connections.

We're starting in the UK because:

The FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) regulatory sandbox provides the path.
Open Banking infrastructure exists and is mature and robust.
6.8 million cohabiting individuals need this.
The UK represents the trust culture we're defending.

And I, personally, have always seen myself aligned with the United Kingdom's rich culture and history. And no other place on this Earth has the founding heritage of the United Kingdom, nor the values of the United Kingdom, and what it brought to the world across the centuries. This is a historic mission. A mission to rebuild trust in the West, a mission to rebuild trust in the world. A mission to rebuild trust in humanity. There are two ways to perform this sort of mission: by being a government, or by being a company. And, as we're at Downing Street, we're going to build a company.

A Call to Action

To couples: Choose transparency. Choose fairness. Choose progressive trust-building over binary extremes. Your financial relationship shapes your romantic relationship. Handle it with the care it deserves.
To citizens of high-trust societies: Recognise what you have. Appreciate it. Protect it. The ability to trust strangers, to cooperate effortlessly, to hand over your credit card without fear; these aren't universal human experiences. They're achievements of centuries of human cooperation and advancement. They're under threat. They're worth defending.
To those from low-trust societies who now live in the West: You know both worlds. You understand what's at stake. Help protect the trust culture that welcomed you. Don't let these countries slide towards the distrust you left behind.

The Choice Before Us

Two paths diverge:

Path one: Trust continues eroding. Political polarisation intensifies. Social media fragments shared reality. Economic inequality increases. Young people trust less with each generation. Financial secrecy in relationships become normal. Civic participation declines further. Eventually, the UK, Ireland, Canada, and the US start resembling Brazil, high-income but low-trust, wealthy in resources but poor in social capital, economically developed but culturally fractured.
Path two: We recognise trust as infrastructure requiring active maintenance. We build institutions that promote transparency rather than secrecy. Wer create financial tools that help couples build trust progressively. We address inequality that destroys shared experience. We reform social media that amplifies division. We strengthen civic institutions that connect strangers. We pass down trust culture to the next generation intact, if not better.

plan/ria is one small contribution to path two. We cannot solve trust erosion alone. But we can help couples, the fundamental social unit, build the transparent, fair, adaptive financial relationships that model trust for society. Because trust begins at home. In the decision to share an account. In the conversation about a purchase. In the choice between secrecy and transparency. In the progressive revelation that says: I trust you more today than yesterday. These small acts, repeated across millions of relationships, create the social capital that enables prosperity. The alternative is a society where everyone brings the payment terminal to your table. Where every transaction requires elaborate verification. Where strangers never cooperate. Where prosperity remains forever constrained. We've seen that world. In Brazil. In Mexico. In Pakistan. In every low-trust society. We refuse to let it become the future of the West. Join us.

References

1. World Values Survey Data

Organisation: World Values Survey Association
Topic: Cross-cultural trust measurements ("Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted?")
Access: https://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/
Key Finding: Canada 70%, UK 60%, US 58%, Brazil 7%, Mexico 17% trust rates

2. Pew Research Center - Trust Studies

Study: "Where Trust is High, Crime and Corruption are Low" (2008)
Access: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2008/04/15/where-trust-is-high-crime-and-corruption-are-low/
Key Finding: High-trust societies experience 20-30% lower transaction costs

3. Our World in Data - Trust

Resource: Comprehensive trust data compilation
Access: https://ourworldindata.org/trust
Content: Historical trust trends, international comparisons, survey data aggregation

4. Ipsos Global Trust Survey

Study: "30% of adults say most people can be trusted"
Access: https://ipsos.com/en/interpersonal-trust-across-the-world
Content: International interpersonal trust measurements

Institutional Trust & Declining Trust

5. Edelman Trust Barometer 2024

Organisation: Edelman
Topic: Composite trust scores across government, business, media, and NGOs
Access: https://www.edelman.com/trust-barometer
Key Finding: UK scores 39 (among lowest globally), Canada 53, US 46

6. King's College London Policy Institute

Study: "Confidence in Institutions" (UK data)
Access: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/policy-institute/assets/confidence-in-institutions.pdf
Key Finding: UK government trust fell from 34% (2021) to 24% (2023)

7. OECD Trust Survey 2021

Study: "Insights from the 2021 OECD Trust Survey"
Authors: Mariana Prats, Emma Phillips, Sina Smid
Access: https://journals.sagepub.com/
Topic: Government institutional trustworthiness evaluation

Organisation: UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs
Access: https://social.desa.un.org/sites/default/files/inline-files/World%20Social%20Report_Dec2024.pdf
Key Finding: Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Tunisia, Iraq, Venezuela >50% zero trust in government

9. Gallup - Trust in Major Institutions

Study: "Gen Z Voices Lackluster Trust in Major U.S. Institutions"
Access: https://news.gallup.com/opinion/gallup/510395/gen-voices-lackluster-trust-major-institutions.aspx
Key Finding: US trust declined from 46% (1972) to 34% (2018-2025)

Financial Trust in Relationships - Academic Studies

10. Kansas State University - Financial Arguments and Divorce

Researchers: Dew, J., Britt, S., & Huston, S.
Study: "Examining the Relationship Between Financial Issues and Divorce" (2012)
Published: Family Relations, 61(4), 615-628
Access: https://www.k-state.edu/news/newsreleases/jul13/predictingdivorce71113.html
ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259544299_Examining_the_Relationship_Between_Financial_Issues_and_Divorce
Sample Size: 4,500+ couples from National Survey of Families and Households
Key Finding: Financial arguments are the strongest predictor of divorce (stronger than sex, children, or in-laws)

11. NIH - Money as Marital Conflict

Researchers: Papp, L. M., Cummings, E. M., & Goeke-Morey, M. C.
Study: "For Richer, for Poorer: Money as a Topic of Marital Conflict in the Home" (2009)
Published: Family Relations, 58(1), 91-103
Access: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3230928/
ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227628050_For_Richer_for_Poorer_Money_as_a_Topic_of_Marital_Conflict_in_the_Home
Sample: 748 conflict instances from 200 spouses' diary reports
Key Finding: Money conflicts are more pervasive, problematic, recurrent, last longer, remain unresolved despite problem-solving attempts

12. Northwestern University Kellogg - Joint Accounts Causation Study

Study: Experimental evidence on joint accounts and relationship quality
Finding: Newlyweds randomly assigned to joint accounts maintained relationship quality over 2 years; separate accounts showed significant declines
Note: This is experimental evidence (not just correlation) showing causation

13. Multi-Institution Joint Account Research

Institutions: UCLA Anderson, Northwestern Kellogg, Cornell, Indiana University
Topic: Joint financial management correlation with relationship satisfaction
Key Finding: Joint savings accounts: 94% marital satisfaction vs. 82% with only personal accounts

Financial Stress & Relationship Outcomes

14. Ramsey Solutions - Money, Marriage, and Communication Research

Organisation: Ramsey Solutions
Study: Survey of married couples on financial stress
Access: https://www.ramseysolutions.com/relationships/money-marriage-communication-research
Sample: Survey data from married couples
Key Findings:
- 20-40% of divorces cite money as contributing factor (2nd leading cause after infidelity)
- 86% of couples married ≤5 years started marriage in debt (vs. 43% married 25+ years)
- 41% felt pressured to spend more than affordable on weddings
- 54% used credit cards for wedding expenses, 73% regret it
- "Great" marriages: 87% set long-term goals together vs. 41% struggling marriages
- Communication: 94% "great marriages" discuss money dreams vs. 45% problematic ones

15. Western & Southern Financial Group

Study: "Money Talks Couples Can't Afford to Skip" (2025)
Access: https://www.westernsouthern.com/money-conversations-before-marriage-2025
Key Finding: Joint savings accounts correlate with 94% marital satisfaction vs. 82% separate accounts

Financial Infidelity Research

16. National Endowment for Financial Education (NEFE)

Topic: Financial deception in relationships
Key Finding: 43% of Americans who have combined finances admit to financial deception

17. Bankrate Survey

Topic: Financial secrets in relationships
Key Finding: 42% of those married/living with partners have kept financial secrets

18. Experian Financial Infidelity Study

Topic: Hidden purchases in relationships
Key Finding: 34% have hidden purchases from partners

19. Generational Financial Infidelity Data

Source: Multiple surveys (NEFE, Bankrate, Experian combined)
Key Findings:
- Gen Z: 67% financial infidelity rate
- Millennials: 54%
- Gen X: 33%
- Baby Boomers: 30%
- Paradox: Gen Z 63% view it as bad as physical infidelity (highest awareness)

20. Financial Infidelity Consequences Study

Finding: Among those committing financial infidelity:
- 42% caused arguments
- 32% led to less trust
- 16% led to separation
- 16% led to divorce
- Only 19% grew closer, 16% improved communication

Trust Culture - Brazil Specific

21. NPR/WBUR - "Essential Trust: Lessons from Brazil's Trust Crisis"

Date: November 30, 2022
Access: https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2022/11/30/essential-trust-lessons-from-brazils-trust-crisis
Topic: Deep dive into Brazil's low-trust society and cultural implications
Related Access:
- NPR Illinois: https://www.nprillinois.org/2022-11-30/essential-trust-lessons-from-brazils-trust-crisis
- LAist: https://laist.com/news/npr-news/essential-trust-lessons-from-brazils-trust-crisis

Additional Sources Referenced

25. Self Credit Builder

Article: "Building Financial Trust in Relationships"
Access: https://self.inc/blog/building-financial-trust-in-relationships

26. Monarch Money

Article: "How to Promote Financial Transparency in a Relationship"
Access: https://www.monarchmoney.com/blog/financial-transparency-relationship