How to Navigate Compliance and Content Creation as a Financial Marketer
When it comes to publishing content and navigating compliance, most people’s advice is something along the lines of “make sure to get compliance involved” – and that’s where it ends.
But how do you get them involved? What if they’re not responding? How do you ensure a collaborative review process?
Marketing is about taking risks, making bets and experimenting. And yet, in the world of financial services we often don’t have that luxury. We have compliance. We have restrictions. We have to be careful about what we do and say.
And it’s for a good reason: when you’re managing a person or a business’ finances, helping them save for retirement or buy a house, you have to be careful with what you say, write and do. This also applies in the B2B financial services world, where financial services firms are often providing the infrastructure to the companies that are managing people’s money – which means there are just as many restrictions.
As a content agency that works mostly with B2B financial services companies, we’ve created and published content for payment orchestration companies, digital banks, credit cards and invoice financing solutions – meaning we know what it’s like to navigate compliance in content.
We’ve had articles that were never published due to compliance issues. We’ve had articles based on interviews with a compliance professional that were also never published (our fault because the topic was not pre-approved). We’ve also had articles that were published and then taken down because of the sensitivity of the topic.
In other words, we’ve been through it ourselves. Through trial and error and experience, we’ve figured out (and are still figuring out) what seems to work best when it comes to creating compliant content.
Based on our own experience creating content for financial services companies and other tips shared in the Fintech Marketing Slack group, we’ll be going through how to work with compliance to publish content that’ll help reach your marketing goals
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Why does compliance exist?
Before we dig into how to create content that is compliance, it’s worth clarifying why it’s so important for compliance to get involved from a marketing perspective.
The first step to healthy collaboration is understanding the perspective of the other party, so it’s worth explaining why compliance teams are so important from a financial marketing perspective. Your compliance team does more than just ensuring you “adhere to regulations”.
They prevent your company from getting sued
Compliance exists to make sure the financial services company abides by the country’s regulations, which in turn are in place to protect consumers and other businesses.
Compliance professionals are there to make sure the financial services company acts appropriately and doesn’t break the law. When companies aren’t compliant, you get instances like Wirecard and FTX, where businesses and consumers lost millions.
This is why if a financial services company says something that isn’t true on social media or their website, it could lead to a lawsuit. If, for example, you state that your company is an ADI in Australia (Authorised Deposit-taking Institution), but it turns out it’s not, a third party can choose to file a lawsuit against your company if their money was at risk.
We’ve had this happen to a client many years before – although it didn’t lead to a lawsuit, it meant that moving forward they were a lot more careful about what they posted.
Compliance is there to make sure your company is never liable to a lawsuit.
They help manage your company’s reputational risk
If you’re creating content about your competitors or about a new regulation, you have to be careful about what and how you say it.
For example, it’s important not to outright criticize banks or certain regulators. Compliance is there to make sure you’re not accidentally ruining the relationship with a key partner.
If your company is in the middle of getting a license and trying to cooperate with them, then you don’t want a marketing piece to potentially affect that process.
They ensure you maintain your license
Maintaining a regulatory license is a lot harder than getting the actual license. That’s because once licensed, the company needs to spend a lot of money and time on admin, such as completing regular audits and keeping the right information up to date.
Publishing something online that is incorrect could potentially lead to your financial services company losing their license. For example, telling everyone that you are a bank when actually you hold an e-money license could cause the FCA to revoke your license.
In 2020, the FCA issued a warning against fintech firm Lanistar, which hired influencers that were saying that its card “provides ultimate customer security” – even though they were not approved by the FCA. No license was revoked, but it’s a good example of what can happen if marketing doesn’t work closely with compliance.
Compliance is there to make sure something like that doesn’t happen to your firm.
These are three key reasons compliance is important when it comes to financial marketing – there are more, but these are the ones we’ve heard based on our discussions with different compliance professionals.
Now let’s get into the process that we use to ensure content is compliant.
How to collaborate with your compliance team and create content that’s compliant: our process
Here’s the worst case scenario: you’ve spent hours doing research for a long-form article. You’ve interviewed a subject matter expert on your team (and even got a customer testimonial!). You then spent hours writing and editing the piece.
Needless to say, you’re incredibly proud of it. Before publishing it you send it through to compliance. One day later, you get the email: “Publishing this is high risk and we cannot allow us to publish this article on the website.”
All this energy into something that never gets published. You’re distraught, and are tempted to blame the compliance team and say “you don’t get it!”.
What can you do to avoid this?
People will tell you that you need a process, good communication and a collaborative team. But ultimately, it’s all about trust.
Throughout your relationship with compliance professionals, you need to show that you value their feedback and are actively implementing it. In every new piece of content you send them, you want to have fewer and fewer errors or comments.
In an ideal world, you reach a point where the compliance person only spends 10 minutes reviewing – or even better, they trust you enough to publish it yourself (although some companies won’t allow that, which is fine).
Building trust takes time. It happens after repeatedly creating and publishing content together that compliance approves. And that happens via process, communication and collaboration.
Based on our experience creating content for regulated financial services companies, here’s a process that we’ve found works:
Before or during the your content research process, set up a meeting with key compliance professionals and ask them:
What topics should we avoid?
How should we talk about certain phrases? (e.g. avoid using the word “bank”)
What review process should we have?
Share your objective with them: to reach a point where they only need to spend 10 - 20 minutes reviewing that piece.
Set up a recurring monthly meeting to go over your content calendar and key topics for the month.
Here, go through the content calendar and make sure they’re comfortable with all the topics.
Take every single opportunity to educate them on content and the purpose of the content: which is to help generate leads, increase brand and product awareness, support the sales team and ultimately help grow the company.
Keep a document with “housekeeping notes” and a style guide
You won’t remember every single piece of feedback after every call and review process, so keep a document where you take note of phrases to avoid, the right language to use and how to talk about certain product features.
Send the pieces to compliance to review in the easiest way possible
If they prefer Microsoft Word over Google Docs, send it via Word. Make it as easy as possible for them to read and review.
For every piece of feedback, take note of it in your housekeeping document.
Before you send out a piece to get reviewed, go through it with a fine tooth comb.
For every feedback or comment you get, see it as a trust-building opportunity. In order for them to trust you, your article has to be perfect: clear writing, no regulatory blunders, and good product knowledge. Most importantly, you need to show that you are learning from previous feedback and are not making the same mistakes.
Keep following up
In our experience, the main issue with compliance is that it’s very hard to get a time with them as they are very busy people. Here’s what we’ve found helps:
Send emails on Tuesdays, Wednesdays or Thursdays.
Send a reminder every week if necessary.
If that doesn’t work, set up a call and go through the article with them on the call.
If they agree to it, add a recurring timeslot in their diary for them to easily batch review pieces of content.
And that’s just the beginning. The key is to keep trying to establish healthy communication and collaboration, and as Helen Owen says below, be diplomatic and pragmatic.
Here are a few additional tips…
Tips on creating compliant content
We asked the group at the Fintech Marketing Slack group for their tips on dealing with compliance, and here’s what they said (along with some of our other tips).
Build your review process together with compliance
Amelie Arras, Marketing Director at Zumo says:
“It's about having the right process in place. For us, each member who creates content has to submit their piece by answering questions in a form to ensure they adhere to the guidelines. It also provides peace of mind for our compliance team as we have documented evidence of what the reasoning was to approve our pieces of content.”
Richard Hudson, Head of PR and Comms at OpenPayd, also says:
“Build an approval process that makes life easier for compliance. Compliance people don’t want to go hunting round your Marketing folder in sharepoint/GDocs for a file you shared a week ago.”
Helen Owen, CMO at Andaria talks about boundaries:
“It's definitely about establishing what's mandatory over what's being requested by your compliance team. It's important to set out on the right foot and establish those boundaries though. Set regular review meetings to talk about plans and issues. You also have to commit to a mutual learning journey where compromises will be involved in order to strike the right balance between compliance and marketing goals. Everyone has to be very pragmatic and diplomatic!”
Base your opinions on third party news articles
If you want to write an opinion piece on recent events or a new regulation (in other words, true thought leadership), things can get hairy.
If you really want to write on a touchy topic, use other people’s opinion and see it as you “reporting” on other people’s thoughts. For example, link to a report or a news article where someone talks about the challenge they faced or where they discuss what this means for the industry (see how we did this in this article for Zai).
But most importantly: make sure everything is sourced.
Whether you’re writing an opinion or explaining how something works, make sure that you always add sources. Avoid offering advice, and add sources to anything that talks about third parties.
Get trained on all FCA regulations and guidance
Ilias Tsatalmpasidis, Head of Growth at Superscript:
“I think marketing teams need to be first of all trained on all the FCA regulations and guidance that affect them.
And I think in general if you’re to distill them it’s all about being really fair to the customer. I wish the FCA style rules apply to all marketing not just on the Financial Products and Services. It would have really helped and protect the consumers.
Some tips:
Avoid any kind of gray areas
Be really honest in what you’re writing.
For bold or comparative statements, capture somewhere (if not within the article) how you substantiate what you claim
And then finally I suggest having a process that has peer 2 peer compliance reviews embedded before anything goes live
Even if there’s a slight concern always check what your compliance team thinks.
Warning: If other companies are “doing it” it doesn’t mean that it’s right and it’s compliant. Always debate it!”
Richard also shares why it pays to learn the regulations:
“Learn the regs yourself so you can discuss the issues as equals, rather than being told what you can and can’t do.”
Write comparison pieces that focus on features, not benefits
We are big fans of comparison pieces, but compliance usually is not.
But comparison pieces have consistently brought in leads and customers for our clients. So what do you do? Here are some tips:
Add sources to everything you say.
Don’t talk about the benefits: only features. The issue with benefits is that they are subjective, and therefore can be interpreted in a way that could put your company at risk.
Talk at length about your product’s benefits, but don’t talk about benefits of your competitor
Do not bash on competitors. Don’t say they are bad, don’t say anything negative. Only include facts which can be sourced.
Read more: Why You Should Write About Your Competitors as a Financial Services Company
Add disclaimers to your content pieces
Add a paragraph at the bottom of every article that says something along the lines of “this information is correct as of XX date, we are not liable”. Here’s a sample one:
“This information is correct as of XXX. This information is not to be relied on in making a decision with regard to an investment. We strongly recommend that you obtain independent financial advice before making any form of investment or significant financial transaction. This article is purely for general information purposes.”
Andreea Balasa, Growth Marketing Manager from ComplyCube also says: “Provide disclaimers and disclosures on the website: fees, charges, and the risk associated with using the product (investment as an example: "Capital at risk")”
Ensure your content is always up to date
Another great tip from Andreea:
“Making sure the content is up to date (especially when there's a regulatory update) - just to avoid any compliance issues coming from incorrect or outdated info. The compliance team should also stay on top of things and share any regulatory changes with the team (so they can review and action any requirements).”
Amelie also says:
“We review the guidances on a quarterly basis - what new guidances have come in, what latest ruling, so we learn from the industry mistakes.”
Work with compliance, not against them
As a marketer, it can be frustrating. Marketing is differen to product. In order to sell and promote your product, you need to talk about benefits, explain use cases and sometimes take risks. And this is where you can butt heads with compliance.
That’s why it’s important to educate compliance professionals on the role of marketing at all times. Make it clear that marketing is not a “nice to have”: marketing is necessary to help grow the company.
It can be frustrating at first, but it’s important to make it clear to compliance that you want to work with them, not against them. If not, you won’t be able to get anything ever published. Make sure to:
Tell them that you understand their approach and view (educating yourself on the regulations will help you have a discussion as equals, as Richard says)
Educate, educate, educate. Explain how what you’re doing benefits the organisation (this is where attribution and showing that your efforts bring in leads and customers really helps)
Meet them halfway.
Again, it’s all about trust. Once they trust that you will make sure to adhere to compliance and regulation, then things get a lot easier.
If you’ve tried all the above and are still having issues, that’s where it makes sense to talk to the leadership team. Ultimately, marketing is key to growing a financial services company – and you can’t do that if your hands are always tied.
We hope these tips were useful. If you have any questions or want to learn more about how other marketing leaders are handling compliance, join our Fintech Marketing Slack group and ask around.