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4 Ways Financial Services Marketers Play a Role in Risk Management

Published Date
Author Amanda Isaacson

Between maintaining consumer trust and adhering to regulations, financial services organizations are often looking for low-risk, compliant solutions that mitigate risk for data breaches or mishandling of customer data.

Organizations in the financial services industry are required to comply with a number of different regulations enforced by agencies such as:

For FINS Marketers, this means it’s imperative to incorporate risk management and compliance into overarching data strategies and architecture, and use the right customer data in the right ways. 

While customer data like product interest, application statuses, and other standard attributes such as age, geographic location, and online behavior is compliant for FINS marketing, it’s illegal to target customers based on the amount of money they have in their accounts or their credit scores. 

While this can be overwhelming for marketers, educating yourself on the regulations, and making sure you have the right tools and partners in place to help can be a great first step.  Below are four ways marketers can play a role in risk management of customer data. 
 

1. Creating a Robust Preference Center

It’s important for customers to manage how they want to be communicated with by channel (email, phone, text, etc.) and the information they want to receive. Giving customers a robust preference center increases marketer engagement by channel and delights the customer. Additionally, when compliance officers and regulators need to ensure your organization is abiding by the CAN-SPAM law you have the preferences documented and managed to avoid hefty law-suits.  


2. Ensuring Domain Security 

Domain securitization is important not only from a technical perspective for customers to receive emails from your secured domain, but it also helps with email deliverability and engagement. By monitoring your domain, you can determine deliverability issues and potential risks with data integrity.

In 2020 alone, brand impersonation accounted for 81% of all phishing attacks, while a single spear-phishing attack resulted in an average loss of $1.6 million. Security researchers predict this will double by the end of 2021. In turn, this increases the need for organizations to improve their email security as soon as possible.


3. Staying on Top of Email Archiving 

Ever since the Dodd-Frank Act was implemented in 2010, the financial services industry has been under increased scrutiny. Dodd-Frank introduced new regulations that made it imperative for financial institutions to invest in email archiving, to protect organizations and consumers from hefty lawsuits and fines. As marketers, it’s important to ensure the processes and technology is in place to archive all communications. Additionally it will enable businesses to allow their customers to better self-serve, as well as retain customer information about communications and product information. 
 

4. Developing a Data Management Strategy 

Encryption of data for financial organizations is extremely important, not only from a business process perspective, but also from a consumer’s trust. Ensuring data is protected and marketers are leveraging the attributes to properly segment is crucial to helping financial organizations connect with their customers. According to Salesforce’s Financial Leaders Report, 66% of consumers expect companies to understand their financial needs which can include everything from a life changing event, to business needs and financial investment decisions.  

CDPs — or Customer Data Platforms — are emerging as necessary tools to help marketers create unified customer profiles, leveraging a comprehensive customer database that pulls in multitudes of first party data from previously disparate sources, 


Even though financial compliance can be overwhelming for marketers, arming yourself with the right knowledge and technology can not only mitigate risk and losses for your organization, but also give you the confidence to create seamless, personalized, and delightful experiences for your customers.