Putting inclusion at the heart of financial services comms and marketing

Look around your office. Or next time you are at an industry event, cast your eye around the room. Financial services is not very diverse, especially at the higher levels.?

There is lots of research to affirm what you are likely to have seen and experienced yourself. One recent piece of work found white men from higher socio-economic backgrounds are thirty times more likely to succeed in financial services than working class ethnic minority women.

So, improving diversity and inclusion has become an increasing priority for the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

The regulator expects firms to make diversity and inclusion "part of how the UK financial sector does business".

This commitment is further reinforced in recent proposals drawn up by the FCA and PRA to introduce a new regulatory framework on diversity and inclusion (D&I) in the financial sector. This suggests the regulator wants firms to embed inclusion into their business practices, which, if you think about it, would and should include their communications and marketing.

?The focus on diversity and inclusion can also be found clearly in Consumer Duty - a set of regulations that the FCA is keen to remind firms are not “not once and done”.

In November, Nisha Arora, Director of cross-cutting policy and strategy at the FCA, noted good practice they’ve seen included firms simplifying language in customer communications and introducing more accessible formats. This year the regulator has said supervisory work to test firms’ implementation of the Consumer Duty and to improve firms’ delivery of good consumer outcomes will continue. Part of that means customers need to be able to understand your communications.?

Other regulatory activities reinforce this focus on diversity and inclusion. Social media promotional guidelines, published in March, remind us that all firms should consider the principles of the WCAG (the global standard in digital accessibility guidelines) or an alternative, equivalent standard when designing their online promotions.

The regulator is seeking to get its own house in order. As long ago as 2017, it was taking action to make its own language more inclusive, removing gendered terms like ‘chairman’ or other language it considered non?inclusive such as ‘Chinese walls’. Words carry great power: use the right ones and you can help people feel included and fairly treated.

The business value of furthering diversity and inclusion

While some firms will bemoan the costs and principle of the FCA’s increasing focus on diversity and inclusion in the financial services sector, especially prescriptive FCA diversity and inclusion guidelines, others will recognise its necessity.

Evidence is piling up about its benefits to companies, including those in financial services.

According to a survey from the Chartered Insurance Institute’s (CII), published in March, practices such as EDI training for colleagues that goes beyond meeting D&I compliance requirements, or attracting talent from underrepresented groups had led to positive outcomes such as greater creativity, innovation and employee engagement.

That furthers 2019 research from McKinsey showing that companies in the top quartile for gender diversity on executive teams were 25% more likely to have above-average profitability than companies in the fourth quartile. It had similar results for other indicators of diversity.

Inclusive business practices: marketing and communications

One clear and crucial way that companies can and should instil a commitment to diversity and inclusion is in communications and marketing, both internal and external – much like the FCA itself shows signs of doing.

Brands that show genuine understanding of the importance of representation and inclusion have the power to deliver their ideas with more impact – to connect with their audience more deeply.?They also anticipate a potential future where even more regulatory scrutiny comes to bear on companies’ diversity and inclusion.

But what does diversity and inclusion mean in communications and marketing? It is about consulting with and fairly representing your audiences, whatever their background or circumstances. It involves ensuring they can access and use the communications you produce. It also means they can see themselves represented in your comms - and that holds more weight than you can imagine. It’s about torpedoing stereotypes, by considering involvement and co-creation at every opportunity you’ll create communications and marketing that are authentic and genuine.

That’s a lot. Especially if - as it is likely - your team includes people with varying enthusiasm and confidence in ensuring communications are inclusive, diverse and accessible. Many companies in the financial services industry will already be on the journey, and looking at ways to make their comms more inclusive. The challenge though is often one of consistency: ensuring everyone is on board and applying your company’s inclusive principles to each and every communication or piece of content.?

At Folk, this is often the point at which we are called to support organisations: efforts are being made to improve the inclusivity and accessibility of communications and marketing, and in achieving D&I compliance, but there is recognition that more needs to be done.

That’s why we created The Real Folk Panel, our collective of underrepresented comms consultants who can provide peace of mind and help brands progress their comms and marketing, inclusively. The panel represent a wide range of lived experiences, skill sets and professional expertise, coming from different intersections of LGBTQIA+, ethnic groups, age 50+, disability, religion, gender, socio-economic backgrounds and more.

Working with The Real Folk Panel enables brands to tap into this wealth of knowledge and lived experience, to gain first-hand insights, whether that’s in creating a diverse and inclusive work environment, to inform inclusive communication for boards and senior management, communication strategies, audits of your creative output or to help in crafting inclusive content.

I’m so proud of all of the brands we’re working with who have taken steps to become more inclusive. Not because the regulator says so, but because they recognise we all have a responsibility for making the world a more inclusive place to be.