Anyone who follows professional sports could spot one of the most dominant players in the league - stock trading and investing apps. Seeing the biggest sports stages in the world flooded by fintech ads is another indicator of the billions of advertising dollars being spent by companies in the space. As the market for innovative personal finance apps, alternative trading services, and payment solutions heats up, the competition among financial services providers grows. Companies are spending billions on marketing and advertising, paying big bucks to be center stage for public attention.

For fintechs that operate globally and under the jurisdiction of multiple government agencies and regulatory systems, designing and deploying advertising and marketing campaigns is a risky business. As a result, localization of marketing campaigns take precedence as teams navigate a maze of global regulations aimed at protecting the consumer. Firms can be heavily penalized for misleading advertising, costing millions in fines, and losing hard-earned brand equity. 

To ensure compliance with regulations for governing ad content in financial services and adherence to corporate brand guidelines, leading financial services companies are adopting advanced technology platforms. Here are three key areas where technology can help keep marketing campaigns compliant:

Omni-Channel Compliance 

Monitoring and tracking advertising content across all marketing channels can be fraught with risks. With a growing number of social media channels combined with the explosion of email marketing and television and print advertising, executives responsible for these function have a difficult job of oversight. They have to spend countless hours reviewing what their team is distributing across different channels and have to ensure those activities are compliant based on their location and subsector. Manual checks can no longer address the pace and scale in which advertising content is generated and distributed. Instead, financial institutions can leverage AI-based compliance platforms to automate their marketing compliance and focus on their campaigns.

Affiliate overview

With marketing affiliates taking an increasingly important role in fintechs’ go-to-market strategies, auditing their activity becomes critical. With affiliates being hyper sales-driven, there is a risk they can overcommit or overpromise to consumers. Yet, the full legal responsibility remains on the fintech provider selling the services, not the marketing affiliate charged with promotion. Auditing the activity of affiliates retrospectively isn’t effective when trying to avoid fines and non-compliance. New technologies and advanced AI enable real-time monitoring and identification of promotions to ensure your affiliates are operating within the rules.

Proactive Remediation 

"A person who never made a mistake, never tried anything new" is a famous quote from Albert Einstein. It’s a phrase that many marketers can relate to. Marketers are trying new approaches and moving quickly to embrace the next new tactic, strategy, and channel to attract and retain customers. Experimenting and launching new campaigns can lead to mistakes and errors. When disaster strikes, marketers and compliance functions need a backup plan. Technology can serve as that critical backstop. Being able to retract and suspend any marketing piece is as important as detecting a misfired tweet or non-compliant print advertisement. Marketers need a platform that can manage the full spectrum of the marketing compliance function, and keep a record of all activities for their internal compliance function and for external audits. AI can provide those suggestions and next best steps. This simplifies the remediation process and gives marketers the support they need to move fast while reducing marketing risks. 

Like other functions in financial services, marketing is going through a period of disruption. Multi-channel campaigns, celebrities, influencers and affiliates, bold language and gamification are all being used to increase market share. To maximize marketing investments while preserving brand value and meeting compliance, fintechs should leverage advanced technology to allow self-fix and smart monitoring of all external communications and marketing campaigns.