Communicating and Assessing Digital Trust: Insights from Financial Institutions

Increasing reliance on ICT third-party providers has made the evaluation of their digital trustworthiness a core component of organizational resilience in the financial sector. This study, based on the Baltic banking industry survey, examines how digital trust is communicated and which organizational capabilities support its assessment. Four categories of information sources are considered: technical and architectural documentation, reputation-based evidence, external feedback, and blockchain usage as an advanced indicator of transparency. The results indicate that higher capability maturity is associated with broader use of these sources, while advanced transparency indicators appear to play a distinctive reinforcing role in capability development. The findings highlight the importance of complementing established documentation and reputation sources with more sophisticated transparency signals to strengthen internal assessment routines. Practical implications include prioritizing such indicators when seeking to enhance ICT third-party evaluation practices.