Financial Copy That Clarifies Complexity

Specialist copywriting for financial services and fintech

A 360° View of Copywriting for the Financial Services Industry

The financial services industry is multi-layered offering a breadth of product and a depth of opportunity. Over my years as a financial services copywriter I’ve covered the breadth and depth from both institutional investing and personal finance perspectives.

Being of mature years I’ve also gone through the various life-stages of personal finance. Having owned and run businesses (and gone bankrupt) I understand commercial finance. I’ve written about them all for leading industry players. All things considered I bring a 360° view and understanding of financial services and fintech to any brief and have enormous experience of translating quite complicated and complex propositions into easily accessible language that communicates and converts.

Looking for a Financial Services Copywriter?

If you’re looking for an extensively experienced and ultra-competent, astute, and savvy financial copywriter for:

Brand proposition development
Web copy and content
Marketing email copy
Digital advertising copy
Financial blog writing
Internal comms and training
Video content, scripting, direction and production

Financial Services Are Both Complicated and Complex

The distinction between a system being complicated and a system being complex is frequently misunderstood. Complicated systems have a lot of interconnected parts but, when these are properly aligned any system can and should work smoothly. Complex systems function in an environment where there may be many variables, some or most of which may be beyond organisational control.

A simple example would be cars and traffic. Cars are complicated machines with lots of moving parts, but they generally work smoothly. Traffic involves negotiating an ever changing environment that embraces the complex unpredictability of other vehicles and drivers, weather, road surfaces and a range of other variables. These complexities are further added to when you are in unknown territory, seeking direction.

In the same way the majority of financial services are both complicated and complex – both bringing risks that need to be understood and clearly communicated. There are many directions and a multitude of factors.

My Portfolio of Financial Services Writing Experiences

I have a comprehensive cross-section of financial services copywriting experience that encompasses B2B, B2C, D2C and internal comms and training.

This brings with it exceptional understanding of customer personas from sovereign wealth funds, through insurance and pension companies to retail and personal investors.

I also have a crucial awareness of the power of investor sentiment which drives markets and valuations.

Institutional Investing

Money needs a home, preferably a home where it makes more money, or at least doesn’t diminish in value. This can be a real challenge for businesses or organisations with regular recurring income – such as pensions companies, insurance companies or sovereign wealth funds. Every month you get money. But what do you do with it? Generally you give it to somebody else to look after.

Asset Management

Institutional investors have a huge choice of who to give their money to – essentially asset managers who run a myriad of funds controlled by fund managers. I have worked with a range of asset managers including BNP Paribas, Royal London and M&G. I have experience writing about all asset classes:

· Equities

· Bonds

· Property

· Commodities

· Alternative Assets

I understand the difference between active and passive management. I have written about the different styles of management and funds such as factor investing, Quant investing, ESG and SRI investing, hedge funds, Bitcoin and other digital assets and tokens, etc.

HNW Wealth Managers and Family Offices

At a level down from the major AMs I have worked with big Wealth Managers and Family Offices including Flemming Family and Partners at the time of their merger with Stonehage.

Seeking and Selling Alpha

The Holy Grail for any successful asset or wealth manager is to ‘outperform the market’ indices and generate ‘Alpha’ returns. The amazing thing is that most fail.

· Over the past 5 years over two thirds of UK equity funds failed to even beat inflation with only 8.8% outperforming the CPI

· A recent 10-year study showed only 17% of active funds in the UK outperformed passive alternatives that simply track the market

Why Information Asymmetry in Financial Services Works Better for Advisers Than It Does Investors

There is an interesting economic concept called ‘information asymmetry’ whereby individuals believe a third party has better knowledge of an environment than they do. So they ‘trust’ the third party to look after their ‘hard earned’.

Amazingly, investors are prepared to pay for this service even though,, based on the figures above, the vast majority of investors might be better off running their own money and making their own decisions.

Personal Finance

Most individuals are very bad at saving. Many have no discretionary income to allow for structured saving. Indeed, excluding mortgages, as of early 2026, the average UK household debt was £18,392 and at least 16% of UK adults have unsecured debt in excess of £20,000. Very few can afford health insurance. Hence the reason in the UK individuals and their employers together pay NI to provide for health care and a future income after retirement – the complexities of which are complicated!

Personal Pensions, Workplace Pensions, SIPPs and SSAS, Draw Down and Annuities

There are undoubtedly more words written about retirement and how to prepare for it than any other aspect of finance. Quite rightly people are obsessed preparing for it. As such, the desire to mitigate tax leakage whilst optimising a future income means that ‘Pensions’, with a capital P, are still the main vehicle for personal savings.

Pensions and the (seemingly ever-changing) rules around them are both complicated and complex. There are a number of options from workplace pensions (compulsory since 2012 following the Pensions Act 2008), through self-invested personal plans (SIPPs) through small self-administered schemes (SSAS). Generally the more money you have the more complicated and complex the structures and rules become. Then, the more money you have in a pension the more complexities there are about how best to take it out.

Once again the biggest conundrum here is information asymmetry – most people who have the talent to earn considerable sums of money pass it over to experts who they pay to manage it. It’s a big market – from your high street bank, through Independent Financial Advisers, to the manager your employer trusts, you pays your money and you takes your choice – oh, hang on, in the case of a workplace pension it doesn’t quite work that way, but it still makes sense to go with the flow rather than invest it in another bottle of Pinot Grigio.

Protection

There has long been a question as to whether protection is ‘bought’ or ‘sold’. My answer to this conundrum is that it is both bought and sold on fear, particularly related to specific life-stage events such as buying a house or having a family. I have extensive experience in all sectors of the protection sector, in particular in the rather harder sell areas of critical illness and income protection working on brands such Royal London, LV and L&G.

Advice and Guidance

I did a lot of work leading up to the RDR (the FSA’s Retail Distribution Review) in 2012 working with both financial services and pensions companies, and financial advisors. Whilst is it now some years ago, I still believe there is an ‘advice gap’ in the personal finance sector that has never been resolved. Financial services companies struggle to find the language to lucidly communicate with their audiences.

Looking for a Financial Services Copywriter?

So all these things above I know. And life’s too short to really tell you everything I know about financial services copywriting. If you’re looking for an extensively experienced and ultra-competent, astute, and savvy financial copywriter for:

Brand proposition development
Web copy and content
Marketing email copy
Digital advertising copy
Financial blog writing
Internal comms and training
Video content, scripting, direction and production