Have you had the experience of sitting down with a group of digital, marketing or creative peers who understand the professional challenges you face? There’s something about having robust, deep conversations about the practice with those who fully understand the quest for fresh ideas, the exhilaration of success as well as the day-to-day grind. It’s rejuvenating to come away with trailblazing solutions to complex problems. This is the atmosphere Cella goes all in to cultivate each year at Illuminate – our one-of a-kind experience where marketing and creative leaders come together to engage with the industry’s leading experts. Attendees are immersed in cutting-edge instruction, insights and content they don’t find anywhere else. 

Predictably this year, we continued our collective conversation about AI – how and when to use and where it can be applied. Our keynote speaker provided a practical approach to adding AI into everyday work life to make it easier, efficient and more effective. As a marketer in finserv, you might find AI-driven marketing an uphill battle. While your peers in other industries race ahead, every step you take risks being stalled or derailed by regulatory compliance and industry complexities – so much so that putting off going all in on AI can feel like the easiest path. But should you?

The short answer is no. Marketing today is about anticipating your customers’ needs and delivering value at every touchpoint, which means more digitization, more personalization, more speed. And what other technology helps you achieve that, at scale, better than AI-driven tools? 

We know we need AI, so a better question is: What needs to change to make AI work for you? Let’s break down the challenges it presents and, more importantly, how you can overcome them to use AI in a way that delivers the personalized service your customers want.

AI-Driven Marketing in a Complex Regulatory Environment

The financial services marketing landscape looks starkly different from that of other industries. The key differentiator? Regulations. Many, many regulations. While these regulations aim to rigorously protect consumer interests and prevent crime and deception, what often results is a tug-of-war between innovation and regulation. 

Advanced technologies like machine learning are complex and don’t fit easily in this environment. They can clash with these laws, which require detailed explanations (and records) of companies’ processes and decisions. Since AI systems are often panned as “black boxes” – though likely less so in the context of marketing – due to their lack of transparency, it’s challenging to fully leverage them in this environment without enormous risks. 

Regulatory Framework

While most regulations governing the industry could be considered “technology-neutral” in that they don’t consider the specific tools finance organizations use, organizations still have to comply because “[s]ome laws and regulations are applicable to any process or tool a financial institution employs, regardless of whether a financial institution utilizes AI or how.” 

Each type of entity – whether a brokerage firm, bank, or insurance company – is largely governed by different sets of regulations surrounding marketing and advertising, but some common themes emerge:

  • Truthfulness and accuracy: All regulations prohibit false, misleading or exaggerated claims about financial products (“truth in advertising”). Marketing materials and ads should provide accurate information.

  • Transparency: There’s an emphasis on clearly disclosing key details – fees, rates and product characteristics – to ensure consumers fully understand the offerings.

  • Fairness: Regulations aim to prevent discriminatory or biased marketing practices, which applies to ads as well as channels.

  • Consumer protection: They’re focused on protecting consumers from deceptive, predatory or harmful financial practices, particularly around lending and investment products.

  • Compliance with audience understanding: Marketing content must be appropriate and understandable for the intended audience.

AI in Financial Services Marketing: Challenges and Solutions

“Creating compliant content, compliantly.” 

Against the regulatory backdrop, this would be the motto of financial services marketing if it ever had one. Fulfilling it might sound easy enough if you’re operating a small venture and pushing out smaller campaigns. But at scale, a manual, unstructured approach just won’t work to ensure this internal and external compliance.  

So, how do we work despite these challenges and harness AI’s potential?

Privacy and Information Security

Challenge: Finances and personal information – all finance companies deal with these two sensitive elements. Laws like the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) require careful handling of sensitive data, which AI relies on to function effectively. Even the inadvertent misuse or mishandling of personal data could violate these privacy laws. 

Solution: To safeguard customer data, limit data collection to what’s necessary, anonymize sensitive information and use encryption for secure storage and transmission. When you onboard an AI vendor, ensure their tool complies with privacy laws like CCPA and GDPR. How will they store and archive customer data? Where will the data live once you integrate it with the tool? Have processes for consent management and transparency in how data is used. 

Regular audits and vulnerability assessments should ensure ethical data use and identify vulnerabilities. Importantly, these processes should be ongoing, as data management and AI models evolve over time.

Regulatory Compliance

Challenge: With any campaign, your primary goal is ensuring it reaches your audience at the right moment. AI helps achieve that at scale. However, your compliance review process needs to keep up to ensure your content adheres to all the applicable regulations. A weak or poorly defined review process increases the risk of regulatory violations, jeopardizing the campaign’s success and the organization’s reputation.  

Solution: RegTech, or regulatory technology, offers compliance review solutions with regulatory checks built in. These tools can check if your marketing or ad material is compliant with regulatory standards and identify high-risk phrases or misleading statements, among other things. They can also integrate seamlessly with your marketing workflow software and project management tools. Additionally, you can ensure there’s human oversight for high-risk areas or decisions (“human in the loop” or “HITL”). 

To ensure AI-driven decision-making is also explainable and transparent, adopt AI models or techniques like LIME and SHAP, which explain how decisions are made. These tools maintain compliance and assist in identifying potential discriminatory patterns.

Approval Bottlenecks

Challenge: Long and complex approval processes for content make it difficult to iterate quickly and capitalize on AI’s potential for rapid campaign creation. Also, they require collaboration among various teams: marketing, IT, compliance, legal, etc., which can lead to wasted time and resources in some cases.

Solution: To ensure timely content generation and agility don’t suffer, you should maintain a library of pre-approved, compliant marketing language (lexicon) that the AI can reference. This will ensure non-compliant language is flagged before it even enters the review process. In addition to being a regulatory expectation (firms are expected to have clear content review policies, of which a lexicon forms part), this ensures that AI-generated content is accurate, fair, transparent and compliant, speeding up campaign creation. 

Also, to ensure more seamless workflows from a people perspective, set up regular meetings between marketing, legal and IT. Regular collaboration between these teams ensures alignment on marketing trends and the legally compliant use of AI. 

Key Considerations for AI Tools in Financial Services

As a marketer in finserv, you can’t choose tools for your martech stack based on generic considerations alone; you must consider the specific requirements of your industry. 

  • Compliance and regulation: Does the tool comply with industry regulations? Can it provide clear explanations for decisions, and is it easy to audit its processes?

  • Data security and privacy: How does the tool ensure secure data handling, including encryption, anonymization and customer consent management?

  • Bias and fairness: How does it prevent bias, especially in protected demographics, and ensure nondiscriminatory decision-making?

  • Customization and flexibility: Can the tool be tailored for financial marketing needs, and does it integrate with existing CRM systems?

  • Vendor support: What support and certifications does the vendor provide to ensure compliance and security?

In a Nutshell

The effectiveness of AI in your marketing efforts depends heavily on the tools, people and processes you have in place to ensure you’re regulation compliant. With the right technology, such as RegTech geared toward the financial services industry, and well-defined (demonstrable) compliance review processes, you can ensure your AI-driven marketing efforts are efficient and compliant – externally and internally.

The addition of any tool to your martech stack should start with clear use cases and a clear-cut selection process tailored to your business and industry. With personalized martech guidance, you can build the right stack and recruit the right talent to:

  • Market effectively across channels while staying compliant

  • Boost sales and increase engagement

  • Drive personalized experiences while delivering a consistent message

AI doesn’t have to be a roadblock. In fact, it can be a productivity tool that removes obstacles and opens possibilities for your customers and company.

When you need help selecting the right technology to power your marketing, partner with Cella to maximize your martech investments and drive your business forward with confidence.