Key Takeaways from CIM's Financial Services Marketing Leaders' Summit 2024

For those of you who couldn’t make it, or those who were in attendance but would appreciate a recap: Here’s what happened at the 2024 CIM Financial Services Marketing Leaders' Summit earlier this year.

Recently, EI participated at the annual CIM Financial Services Marketing Leaders’ Summit, with our very own Tony Jarvis, MD of Client Relations, moderating a panel on the agenda. The event was sponsored by Adobe, the World Media Group, and EI Advisory, and hosted by Reuters. Following a warm welcome from Jacob Howard, Chair of the CIM Financial Services Sector Interest Group and Director of Marketing at Deutsche Bank, and Simon Robertson, Executive Editor, Reuters, we had the pleasure to attend the full programme of insightful sessions.

Session One

The first panel of the day, Practical applications of AI in FS Marketing, moderated by Alison Harbert, Marketing Director at Investec, uncovered interesting use cases for AI tools. Panellists Holly Middleton, Senior Generative AI Expert at IBM Consulting, Rachel Nixon, Director of Analytical Insights at CME Group, and Rodrigo Pozo, CEO at My Telescope, discussed their top AI applications and partnerships, key learnings from AI use, and shifting skillset requirements for their teams.

The panel highlighted the ongoing challenge of data quality and ethics, ‘what’s real and what’s fake’ when it comes to AI hallucinations. AI isn’t magic – it feeds off the data you give it, highlighting the importance of partners and third-party vendors in building proprietary models and bringing AI experience in house.

The panel presented some industry pain points, namely securing budget and getting people on board the AI vision. It’s about early engagement, working with risk and compliance teams on the vision, identifying potential pitfalls, and creating proof of concept and use cases. An example of how to show the potential value of using AI could be by soft-launching an early version of an AI model to a limited set of users to obtain use cases and measure its impact.

As for skillsets, the unanimous view seems to be that some skills that were previously optional are now essential: How do we best use creative brains in marketing to leverage these AI tools?

Session Two

Simon Murray, FSI Strategy Lead at Adobe, and Jim Clark, Commercial Research Director at Econsultancy, discussed the upcoming Digital Trends 2024 report in a fireside chat.

Simon presented practitioners’ top priority, creating meaningful experiences with customers, using GenAI for personalisation, through the creation of personas. Tasks that would normally be time consuming if done manually, can now be scaled up through AI.

The report highlights a trust gap, with consumers rating responsible data use as their top ask. FS is a trust business, after all, that is not only about managing people’s money but building trust in the brand. Clarifying what the value exchange is between the FS organisation and its customers is crucial in building this trust.

Session Three

The Editor’s View panel saw leading financial editors Izabella Kaminska, Senior Finance Editor at Politico, Tola Onanuga, Senior Editor at Business Insider, Jason Karaian, Business News Director at the New York Times, and Preya Shah, Head of Sales at Reuters, discuss key trends in regional markets, as well as highlighting the financial services ‘winners and losers’ this year, and why.

The panel also discussed the pros and cons of AI use within journalism, and the consensus was that AI was not able to contribute as it currently stands, with one speaker referring to it as a ‘bad intern’, which made us laugh! (And also ties in with Ei’s own AI experience to date).

Session Four

The panel on Brand and Purpose in Financial Services featured marketing experts Christoph Woermann, Global Head of Brand Management and CMO, Corporate Bank, at Deutsche Bank, Chris Strange, Global Brand Director at Lloyds Bank, Mark Scott, Director of Marketing and Communications at CIM, and Andrew Carrier, CMO at Quant, who moderated the session.

The panel said that the search for meaning drives purpose, which needs to be genuine and come from within the organisation. Purpose is your North Star - you not only have to identify where you want to go, but how you want to get there, aligning your company to a purpose ‘story’ that people can resonate with, and getting your Management Board involved in the process.

Additionally, brand purpose must be tangible both internally and externally. Internally, you must identify your advocates in the organisation and be able to share the vision on what purpose can help the business to achieve its objectives. Externally, you must resonate with your audiences in an authentic way. What do they look for in the brands they want to engage with or work for, and how can you deliver on this? Overall, an engaging panel with audience members ‘guessing the brand’ after hearing their statements around purpose.

Session Five

EI’s Tony Jarvis moderated a panel on Is now the time for Account Based Marketing in FS? alongside Nickie McDade, Director of ABM at the London Stock Exchange Group and Kate Tomlinson, Head of Strategic Account Marketing at State Street.

Speaking about the requirements of an ABM programme, the panel referred to the need for people with dedicated ABM roles and a key stakeholder to drive it, as well as having the right data to unlock capabilities.

Tony quizzed the speakers on the relationship between Sales and Marketing teams, with the panellists pointing out that sales teams are time-poor and often have negative assumptions of ABM. You need to identify your stakeholders within Sales who can get the most senior people on board by advocating how the ABM programme will create value, promoting the quick wins, and comparing ABM to non-ABM account performance to demonstrate the value and success of the programme.

Marketing teams must be clear on their mission-critical, customer insight-driven priorities. Important steps in engaging Sales includes selection and communication of key accounts, setting expectations of sales teams from a time and resource perspective, and ensuring that everyone is aligned to the same measures of success. AI tools can also be used to scale personalisation for key accounts - the more personalised a campaign is, the higher the account engagement.

Tony reiterated that a good metric for ABM success is: ‘Does Sales want more of it?’ This discussion certainly got us thinking about different approaches to ABM, with the panel posing the key question: ‘If you don’t have ABM as part of your strategy, why not?’

Session Six

Finally, the closing keynote with Marg Jobling, Group CMO of NatWest, interviewed by Alexandra Delamain, Head of Global Client Partnership at The Economist, covered What CEOs want next from FS Marketers, with Marg offering rich insights into her career highlights and experiences to date, including an impactful partnership with Team GB to inspire, motivate and support success.

We look forward to the next edition of the CIM Financial Services Marketing Leaders' Summit. In the meantime you can check out other CIM events below. 

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