The role of PR in finance is to take the byzantine, often complex day-to-day operations of an individual company and turn it into a recognisable story. While the actual role of someone in the back office might elude the average person on Main Street (or the High Street), what it enables is perfectly comprehensible. Each function allows for the preservation and hopefully growth of savings.
It’s right there in the phrase “public” and as in “public relations”. PR is a window into an organisation. While financial institutions might share some similarities, how and what they do is unique. A proper public relations strategy allows companies to easily explain exactly what they do and why it matters.
Public relations helps build a reputation. Companies that do what they say will build trust in the eyes of the public. This might be with customers, yes, but also with potential customers and people who will not use their particular services.
Trust is paramount in the financial services industry – it forms the foundation of client and customer relations. In order to retain and attract new clientele, institutions must build a respectable and knowledgeable reputation with media outlets. Without a good reputation, individuals and institutions are highly unlikely to trust an organisation with their data and assets, demonstrating how public relations plays a pivotal role in an organisation’s long-term business growth.
Competition is fierce and the conversation is more spread out. Financial news no longer only circulates in financial circles, and organizations must consider their reputation across multiple media channels. For instance, issues surrounding ESG are trending, and investors, the media and the public increasingly take an interest in the ethics of investments. This rise in public scrutiny is just one example of why public relations is central to finance.
What we can learn from the outside
Let’s take a high-level look at the public communications of three companies. Now while we at Cognito do work with many leading financial brands, for this analysis we just focus on what we can see from an external perspective.
JP Morgan is one of the oldest and largest American financial institutions. And their messaging, no matter the channel,, reiterates that they are reliable and have long-standing history and expertise. Their external communications make reference to those more than two centuries, contrasting with a variety of fintech startups that haven’t even been around a decade. JP Morgan also has one of the longest-tenured CEOs of major global financial institutions, which makes it easier to project a message of stability.
JP Morgan seldom surprises. As an august, experienced institution, they have both the luxury and responsibility of long-term planning. We wouldn’t expect JP Morgan to enter a new market every year or engage in the fullscale reinvention that might be common in a Series B round. Everyday the company’s PR programme can reinforce this, with very smart analysts and portfolio managers putting the market’s move into a larger context.
The overall message is – you can trust us and we know our stuff.
Monzo is the biggest banking success story of the past 15 years. Those who haven’t spent time in London may find it hard to comprehend how ubiquitous the company’s specific shade of coral is on tap-to-play and credit cards. Monzo has nearly 10 million customers – a huge amount in a country of around 70 million. While the brand started as targeting digital-native millennials joining the workforce, it has grown to include increasing numbers of people with grey hair and fresh graduates.
Monzo represents a change. There are no branches – its offering is strictly online. That’s meant a different approach to PR as well. This is a social-first organisation, with a widely followed (and frequently copied) presence on Instagram. Expect a keen understanding of what’s happening now – culture references, memes and slang are mixed with sound financial advice.
Monzo doesn’t eschew traditional PR, but the brand tries to do it in a way that remains authentic to its voice. Whereas five years ago The Guardian asked, “Is Monzo ready to grow up?” the company has shown a way forward that enables scale without sacrificing what made them special.
And finally, let’s look at what modern brands do when faced with the unexpected. In October 2024, Starling Bank was fined £29 million in fines by the FCA for failings in their financial crime systems and controls. Starling is a rival of Monzo, offering banking services, including current accounts, savings accounts and lending products. They were praised for an approach that was seen as ‘customer-centric’. Starling was the thinking person’s Monzo, a slimmed-down focused banking offering young professionals could use a base to grow on. They had, for example, no foreign transaction fees and a simplified account structure.
The fines were therefore problematic. Was this ‘mature fintech’ really no different from an anonymous offshore bank account? Starling increasingly wanted to be people’s primary banking relationship – and that requires a high degree of trust.
Starling recognised the seriousness of what happened and responded accordingly. In a press release, the company said they accept the fines and are putting measures in place to rectify the situation. Through publicly acknowledging wrongdoings with clear messaging, Starling took its first steps to rebuild trust and credibility with customers and the industry.
PR has a role in finance on both good and bad days.
