Digital Trust Whitepaper

We know that digital trust is critical to digital adoption and there is strong evidence that businesses capable of establishing trust in their digital products, services and overall digitized delivery will grow considerably more than those who do not. This applies across the spectrum and in core sectors that our clients operate in, such as financial services, transport and healthcare which are digitizing rapidly. It is key.

Law is central to establishing trust in digital products and services because certainty on matters such as legal interpretation, regulatory applicability and enforceability of rights vis a vis digitized as opposed to traditional interactions, can make or break trust in what is being offered. If a consumer cannot be sure that they have “exclusive property” in their assets, or that they will benefit from legal redress in the event that technology-based services sold to them do not deliver, they will not be confident to interact or scale their interactions with these offerings.

There is also a significant issue that failure of digital trust in respect of one product, service or interaction can quickly spread to create lack of confidence in all such digitized business offerings in a particular area (or even worse, a crisis of confidence in digital interactions broadly). So it is important to get legal certainty right from the beginning.

In preparing this paper, we asked ourselves how can we be proactive in supporting building a trustworthy digital world? How can we ensure that when clients and consumers are faced with reasons to question digitized products and services and new technologies, we have built a solid foundation on which to withstand the ebbs and flows of digital adoption? This whitepaper contains 12 chapters, each reviewing a key sector or theme in the context of digitization. We have sought to identify the main legal certainty and trust markers that apply to each, and have provided quick reference, easy to apply recommendations to improve performance on these factors going forward, all with a view to enhancing digital trust.

These topics are significantly interconnected by nature – just as trust failures can easily spread into lack of confidence in digital adoption broadly, we consider that trust establishment is also strongly interconnected and infectious. We believe that businesses and lawyers need to move forward on this together across sectors, specialisms and market segments. We have brought together the multiple chapters on this topic in one place all united under the umbrella theme of Building Better Digital Trust.

Access the full whitepaper here.

Authored by Bryony Widdup.