DaveStevensNow

Blogging about Profitable B2B Marketing | Branding | Digital | Team-Building

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Dave is an experienced global B2B Chief Marketing Officer / Marketing Director with an established reputation for delivering commercial results in start-up, mid-tier, and blue-chip businesses across technology, and business services and professional services sectors. Dave has worked for major brands such as Telefonica O2, EY, and Barclays and held posts from Chief Marketing Officer to Director of Online, has run his own business, and managed a P&L for a major corporate. He is chair and co-founder of the Business Marketing Club (www.businessmarketingclub.org.uk) – a network of B2B marketers. In 2019, he was named one of the top 100 B2B European marketing leaders (https://www.hottopics.ht/34199/top-100-b2b-european-marketing-leaders-2019/). He is a graduate of Cambridge University, a Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) Chartered Marketer and holds a MBA with Imperial College, London. Dave is a keen cyclist and adventure traveller, is married, and lives in Buckinghamshire. You can read his blogs at www.DaveStevensNow.com.

FinTech isn’t about the Tech. Or the Fin. It’s about Marketing.


At a time when Brand Britain is taking a pounding across the globe, it’s rather nice to see a report launched celebrating a Brand Britain success story. This week, the UK Government issues a state of the nation report into UK FinTech.

And the report paints the picture of a sector in rude health. There are more than 1600 FinTech firms now in the UK and estimates suggest that this will more than double by 2030. London has the world’s highest concentration of financial and professional service firms.

And critically rather than just celebrating success, the report gives budding entrepreneurs some guidance on what to do to join the sector themselves.

The report delves into the reasons for UK success in FinTech: connectivity, appetite for risk, emerging tech, the right skills among employees, favourable regulation. But aside from an honourable mention in a piece by Zopa’s Giles Andrews, there’s no mention made at all of what must surely be the key factor in success to date.

The UK is known as one of the world’s leading centres for marketing. For marketing to thrive, you need a clear goal and a strong identity, a culture of honesty and candour, experience of success and failure, an understanding of the invisible and unspoken. You need a strong strategy and you need a clear approach to how to segment and target your market and how to position your offering to the same. The UK FinTech sector has all that.

So look at the good marketing that can result. Think SoFi’s user-friendly web comms, the event programme run by Money 20/20, WePay’s ice cube stunt, the video advertising of Moneysupermarket.com…

I was struck in the foreword to the report by Charlotte Crosswell, CEO of Innovate Finance by the statement that the FinTech sector “is as much about the ‘Tech” as it is the ‘Fin’”. I think it’s about the Marketing too.

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