Ex-Atom Bank CMO Lisa Wood talks to us about the challenges of Financial Services Marketing
In the highly regulated world of financial services, marketers often find themselves walking a tightrope between compliance requirements and creative ambition. Few know this better than Lisa Wood, a senior partner at Open Velocity and former CMO of Atom Bank. Over a career spanning three decades, she has led marketing for customer-centric brands in banking, fintech, travel and legal services.
We recently sat down with Lisa in our latest webinar to discuss how marketing in financial services differs from other industries, the importance of close collaboration with compliance, and the evolving role of technology.
You can read more below, or watch the full recording on-demand.
How did your experience in financial services shape your marketing approach?
"Financial services come with added complexity," Lisa explains, reflecting on her career at brands like Atom Bank and First Direct. "The regulatory environment requires you to stay continuously informed. You can't just think about creative campaigns in isolation, you have to build compliance into every step of your process."
This regulatory oversight can have a significant impact on timelines, she notes. Projects require more documentation, prolonged sign-off processes, and regular audits. Yet Lisa doesn't see this as necessarily restrictive. "Good regulation protects customers. If you're truly customer-centric in your approach, your marketing should naturally align with regulatory expectations, it should be based around solid customer insight and be clear, fair, and not misleading."
Does this heightened scrutiny affect how quickly marketing teams can deliver campaigns?
According to Lisa, the answer depends on the type of campaign. For routine business-as-usual communications, timelines can be fairly efficient. However, large-scale, multi-channel campaigns require greater oversight and more thorough collaboration with compliance teams.
"You can't view compliance as a barrier," she says. "The closer your relationship with them, the better. It's about working collaboratively and involving them early on so you don't face setbacks at the final hurdle. Planning those touchpoints into your timeline can make the process much smoother."
How should marketing and compliance teams collaborate to achieve better outcomes?
"Strong relationships are key," Lisa stresses. "In larger organisations, you'll have defined processes and stakeholders. In smaller teams, collaboration might be more organic. Either way, a healthy tension between marketing and compliance can be a positive. Marketing's job is to push creative boundaries, while compliance ensures you stay on the right side of regulation. When those two forces work together, you get the best results."
Lisa also advises on the importance of timing. "Involve compliance early," she says. "It's not about ticking boxes at the end. Bringing them in at multiple stages, like script reviews or legal consultations, saves time and avoids costly reworks."
You emphasise customer-centricity in marketing. How does that approach help in regulated industries?
For Lisa, customer-centricity is foundational to good marketing, regulated or not. "Marketing should always start with insight," she asserts. "You need to understand your audience deeply. What will resonate with them? What outcomes are you trying to achieve? Once you have that insight, you can build campaigns that both connect with customers and meet regulatory standards."
She adds that delivering on a brand promise is crucial. "If your marketing raises expectations that the customer experience can't fulfil, you're setting yourself up for failure. Over-promising leads to disengagement and a tarnished reputation. The key is consistency—your marketing should match the real-world experience your brand offers."
In a regulatory environment, how can marketing teams still push creative boundaries?
Lisa has never allowed compliance constraints to stifle creativity. "Some of the best campaigns I've worked on challenged the norms and made our compliance team nervous," she says with a smile. "But it's about doing it with purpose. If you're pushing boundaries, you need strong evidence to justify why that approach will deliver for the customer."/p>
The key, she believes, goes back to everyone being informed. "You have to get it right the first time. That means briefing your team and agencies thoroughly, ensuring everyone understands the regulatory landscape, and building in checkpoints to avoid major rework. It's much faster to do it right from the outset than to fix problems later."
It's not just regulatory considerations, how can you stay creative when faced with ad format and channel constraints?
"The digital landscape is filled with restrictive formats, small ads, short-form videos, but this can actually push you to be more disciplined," Lisa explains. "You need to make sure every word in your messaging counts. Clarity and conciseness are key."
She emphasises the importance of journey design. "If you're working with limited space, like in social ads, use your landing pages to provide the necessary terms and conditions. Collaborating with compliance on these details and where they sit as part of the customer journey upfront can make a big difference."
Lisa also encourages marketers to use multiple ad formats creatively. "You don't have to convey everything in one ad. Think of your campaign as a suite of messages across different formats, all working together to tell a cohesive story," she says.
Emerging technologies, particularly AI, are reshaping marketing as we know it. What opportunities and challenges do you see ahead?
Lisa is unequivocal about AI's transformative potential. "AI is already helping us create content, analyse data, and personalise messaging at speed. In the next 12 months, I expect even more advancements in how AI drives insight and automation."
However, this acceleration comes with new challenges, especially for regulated industries. "We'll need to develop systems that integrate compliance checks into AI-driven workflows. Training AI to operate within regulatory parameters will require close collaboration with compliance teams. The big question is: where do we draw the line between automation and human oversight?"
Despite these concerns, Lisa believes that human interpretation remains vital. "Data can reveal patterns, but it doesn't tell the full story. Marketing is ultimately a human-to-human experience. You need to balance data-driven insights with empathy and relevance."
As we wrap up, Lisa reflects on the changing marketing landscape in financial services. "Despite the challenges, it's an exciting time for marketers," she says. "Technology is accelerating what's possible, but staying customer-focused and compliant will remain critical. Success lies in embracing that complexity and finding creative ways to navigate it."
