The Marketing and compliance teams in the financial services sector are finding themselves increasingly at odds, thanks to what some see as archaic approval processes for materials not fit for purpose in today’s environment.
More than eight out of ten senior legal, compliance and marketing professionals in the UK, US and Australia told researchers that they see their relationship as adversarial and ‘us and them’.
For marketers in particular, most went as far as saying compliance is in the way of them getting their job done, blaming the review process for being too long and with too many steps.
It also found that legal/compliance professionals are equally unimpressed with their colleagues in marketing. A similar number believe they don’t understand why they have to abide by complex rules and just want someone else to take the blame when their content is challenged externally.
Almost nine out of ten have often heard their marketing colleagues describe compliance rules as over the top’, even though most of them say it would be much easier to get reviews done if they did not have to check the basics repeatedly.
The study was commissioned by software company Red Marker who surveyed 521 specialists responsible for more than 5,000 employees – including retail and investment banks and asset management firms.
With organisations identified as having misled customers receiving publicised penalties, there’s nothing more important than ensuring the marketing compliance process is watertight
COO Mark Wood said this tension illustrates how easily “the delicate balance between creativity and compliance” can become adversarial.
“Standing out in such a competitive industry relies on swift and effective marketing. Compliance teams and marketers need to find better ways of working together to ensure content is produced and approved efficiently – but also in a way that reduces risk.
“The marketing compliance process has traditionally been under-analysed and there has been a lack of optimisation, with a certain ‘we have a process’ complacency. Many organisations have built quick-fix solutions or outsourced this process, but new technology means there’s no longer an excuse for inefficiency and apathy.
“With organisations identified as having misled customers receiving publicised penalties, there’s nothing more important than ensuring the marketing compliance process is watertight. That starts at the most basic level with robust communication and openness between teams.”
More than eight out of ten of those surveyed (83%) agreed that the ideal review process would have the minimum amount of human subjectivity – and increase the involvement of AI instead, especially when it came to checking standard content such as disclaimers, sources and T&Cs.
“One of the key barriers between these teams is the stereotypes: marketers seeing legal and compliance as being deliberately hindering, versus legal/compliance teams seeing marketers as too ‘gung-ho’.
Full results of the research here
