Working with standards: post-crisis positioning of bank advisors

Taking recent developments in the financial sector as its point
of departure, this article examines how bank advisors are positioned.
Increased complexity in banking products and the risk
orientation that has followed the financial crisis make
demands on the quality of advice. Drawing on qualitative
interview studies in two Danish banks, the article questions
whether the dominant understanding of bank advisors as primarily
sales persons comprises their current positioning.
Contradictory demands on bank advisors emerge in the simultaneous
emphasis on advisory aspects of the work and in the
imposition of new standard procedures; while one points to a
positioning as professional advisors, the other tends to undermine
it and makes the positioning ambiguous.