The profound changes affecting the banking sector in Portugal prompt a reflection on the new role the financial system must play. In a context of increasingly demanding global economic competitiveness, we must all be mobilised to define an agenda that encourages business agents and others to carry out necessary restructuring. As Ram Charan aptly put it at a conference in Lisbon, business agents 'must reinvent their mission, change their financing structure, and design new products and services for the future'. We need a banking sector focused on the future that acts as a value accelerator for our economy. This contract of trust between the financial and business systems cannot rely solely on formal decrees; it must materialise through concrete, daily actions that activate the value chain of wealth creation. The banking sector must act as an active operational partner in the collective project of reinventing the Portuguese economy. Two areas require systemic intervention: deep organisational and structural renewal of industrial sectors and an integrated commitment to innovation as a lever for market value. Without a permanent strategic pact, isolated interventions will fail. The results so far are not encouraging, with many classic industrial sectors failing to renew themselves, leading to closures and loss of market share. This new contract of trust must focus on clear priorities, starting with the complex but necessary reconversion of the national business fabric, while ensuring that the banking sector assumes its responsibilities to restore the system's capacity to function as a network.