During meetings in London this week, I was struck by thoughts from two senior media and communications professionals who expressed concern about how the City, and the various sectors within financial services, defend themselves.

Both felt that the City and the various sectors that collectively make up the financial services industry were not effectively promoting the value they bring. Recession and high profile issues such as banking collapses and redundancies have exacerbated this issue, as the media has given finance and business more profile but not necessarily helped to increase the public’s understanding of a complex financial system.

This is a question of education, with one of the professionals, from a leading funds association, claiming it was working hard to educate the lay-man about what the industry actually does, and the wider benefits that the industry contributes, through tax receipts, community investment and employment.

Both felt that greater engagement on a regulatory and political level was essential in ensuring policy-makers and politicians, who may not be financial experts, understand and are able to make regulatory changes that genuinely benefit the industries. This can only be achieved by adopting a more combative and engaging approach.

More locally, ‘offshore’ has become a pejorative term, and it seems that jurisdictions, such as Jersey and Guernsey, actually face the same communication and reputational issues as its larger counterparts. Although offshore, arguably, has the even harder task of ensuring that the City itself appreciates the value that business with offshore companies adds to the City.

Two phrases stood out in the latest review of the offshore marketplace by The Lawyer magazine.

The journalist, who knows many lawyers in the offshore field, described the offshore legal industry as a 'murky world' and 'highly secretive'. She bases these opinions on the fact that unlike their UK counterparts the lawyers in offshore jurisdictions are reticent about revealing virtually any information about revenue and turnover. Less than a third of the firms in the magazine's annual survey provided any information on revenue.

I think it's time that law firms responded to the market environment in which they work, in a similar fashion to the offshore jurisdictions.

While some of the journalists comments may be borne out of frustration and the limited response, it is no longer acceptable for firms not to provide some measure of their financial performance if they want to be part of the more transparent world in which global financial services now exist.

We are all quick to complain when mainstream media categorise the offshore locations as secretive and opaque, but we are not helping ourselves when the category of professional which is our biggest export into the wider financial world continues to create this impression of secrecy - even with its own professional media.

Perhaps through the various Law Societies, the firms could agree a format so that all firms provide similar data on revenue or on profits so as to help rid ourselves of this unhelpful image.