Content Marketing for Financial Services

Consumer Duty requires firms to demonstrate good outcomes for retail clients across four areas: products and services, price and value, consumer understanding, and consumer support. For marketing, this means every communication — emails, newsletters, social posts, website copy — needs to be clear, fair, and not misleading. It also means you should be able to evidence that your communications help clients make informed decisions, not just sell to them. We build that evidence trail into everything we create.

Yes, but with care. The FCA treats client testimonials as financial promotions if they could influence someone's decision to use your services. They must be balanced (not cherry-picked), accurate, and include appropriate risk warnings where relevant. You also cannot pay clients for testimonials or offer incentives. We help clients create compliant social proof strategies that use testimonials effectively without crossing FCA guidelines.

The key is consistent, low-pressure contact throughout the two years between their initial mortgage and their first remortgage window. A monthly newsletter with useful market updates, rate commentary, and financial tips keeps you front-of-mind without feeling like a sales call. We typically recommend starting a touchpoint sequence around 18 months before the client's fixed-rate end date, escalating to more direct remortgage prompts in the final 3 months.

At minimum, monthly. Advisers who communicate monthly receive roughly three times more referrals than those who only contact clients annually at review time. Consumer Duty's consumer support outcome also implies proactive contact at appropriate intervals — particularly around life events, market changes, or when a client's circumstances may have shifted. A monthly newsletter covers both the relationship and the regulatory expectation simultaneously.

The most effective referral systems are passive — they work without you having to ask directly. Regular newsletters, educational guides, and useful updates give clients something worth sharing with friends or family when financial topics come up in conversation. We also create templated 'introduction' emails and refer-a-friend content that advisers can send after positive interactions, which removes the awkwardness entirely by making the ask feel natural and helpful rather than transactional.

For sole traders and small brokerages, your existing client base is one of your most valuable assets — they already know you, trust you, and are far more likely to return and refer than a cold prospect. Combining a consistent client retention strategy with your lead generation activity means you get more value from every new client you bring in. A well-written monthly newsletter keeps you front-of-mind between transactions and can generate multiple remortgage and referral conversations over time, compounding the return on every lead you have ever placed.

The grey area is usually what counts as a financial promotion in the first place. A general market commentary post is unlikely to qualify; a post that names your services, promotes a specific product, or could reasonably influence someone to take out a financial product almost certainly does. That includes a lot of everyday LinkedIn and Facebook content that advisers publish without thinking twice. Once something is a financial promotion, it needs to go through your compliance process before it goes live — and we handle that as part of our workflow, submitting content directly to your compliance team or network so nothing lands on your channels unapproved.

The most practical approach is to keep an evidence log of all client communications alongside the outcomes they were designed to support. Our content is structured so each newsletter or guide maps to one of the four Consumer Duty outcomes — we document this so you can produce it quickly if the FCA ever asks. Consistent, clearly written, and jargon-free communications sent at regular intervals are the strongest evidence you can have that you take the consumer understanding and support outcomes seriously.