The finance space is not the same as it was in the 90s. Products are digital, customers are global, and competition is no longer limited to the institution down the street with the friendly teller who knew your first name. Everything changed, so why does so much of the language used in financial marketing belong to 30+ years ago? Scroll through bank websites, investor updates, or product pages and the same patterns appear. Long sentences, vague promises, abstract language that feels designed to impress regulators rather than inform customers. It feels so dated and irrelevant for 2026. So how can you write fintech content that doesn’t sound like a 90’s bank? Here’s our take.
Why Traditional Financial Writing No Longer Works
Here’s the truth… the original purpose of bank language was risk avoidance. Copy was shaped by compliance teams, legal precedent, and internal approvals. Over time, that produced a voice that felt safe internally but meaningless externally. Did it bother banks? Not at all. They were legally protected and everything else was up to the consumer. Consumers didn’t understand what they were reading or signing but that didn’t matter.
Traditional financial copy struggles because it does three things poorly:
- It hides meaning behind abstraction. Phrases like “innovative solutions” or “comprehensive offerings” describe nothing tangible.
- It distances the reader. Writing about “clients” and “users” instead of speaking directly to people creates emotional separation.
- It confuses complexity with authority. Long sentences and heavy terminology signal bureaucracy, not expertise.
This is why much financial content is skimmed, ignored, or abandoned entirely which creates its own negative consequences. If you’re entering into a large financial commitment like a loan or mortgage, you need to know what everything means.
How Fintechs Reframed Financial Communication
Fintech brands approached language with a different assumption. Trust is not inherited. It is earned through understanding.
- According to the Edelman Trust Barometer, people trust financial brands more when they clearly explain fees, risks, and outcomes. Transparency now outperforms prestige. Fintech writing reflects this shift. It is not casual for the sake of it. It is intentional.
- Fintechs use plain language, shorter sentences, and clear structure because that is how people read online. They assume the reader is intelligent but busy and focus on explanation over impression.
- The aim is not to “trick” people into signing up for products they don’t understand. The aim is to help them understand before signing up. That switch makes the difference between a disappointed and disloyal customer, and a positive and loyal one.
This is why fintech blogs, explainers, and product pages consistently outperform traditional financial content on engagement metrics such as time on page and completion rates.
Brand Voice Is Strategy, Not Style
In financial marketing, brand voice is often treated as a creative detail. In reality, it is way more than that. It’s built into the core strategy. (Or at least it should be.)
A consistent voice improves recognition, builds familiarity, and reduces friction across every touchpoint. Research from marq shows that brands with consistent messaging can increase revenue by over 30%.
Strong fintech voices share three characteristics.
- They are clearly defined. Not vague descriptors like “professional but friendly”, but specific traits such as clear, calm, and direct.
- They have boundaries. They know what the brand never sounds like. For example, never patronising, never evasive, never hype driven.
- They are applied consistently. Across blogs, landing pages, emails, and even compliance led content like terms and conditions.
This consistency is what makes fintech brands recognisable even when they are discussing complex topics.
Writing for People Making Decisions
One of the most important shifts fintechs made was reframing the audience. They stopped writing for abstract “users” and started writing for people making real decisions with real consequences. Financial decisions involve emotion, uncertainty, and risk. Ignoring that reality does not make a brand more professional. It makes it less credible.
Traditional language:
“Users may experience portfolio volatility due to market conditions.”
Fintech language:
“Your portfolio may go up and down. What matters is how you manage that risk over time.”
The second version does not remove risk. It explains it clearly and respectfully.
This approach aligns with usability research that shows people trust brands more when risks are stated plainly rather than softened by euphemisms.
Professional Tone Without Institutional Stiffness
A common fear in financial marketing is that clarity reduces authority. The opposite is true.
- Studies in financial UX consistently show that people associate plain language with transparency and competence. Overly complex language signals insecurity, not expertise.
- Fintech tone is professional because it is precise. It uses active voice, avoids unnecessary qualifiers and states facts clearly supporting them with evidence.
For example, “We charge a 1% fee” is clearer and more trustworthy than “A fee may be applicable under certain circumstances”.
Current Trends Shaping Fintech Content
The most effective fintech content strategies today are not built around volume or visibility alone. They are built around credibility, consistency, and usefulness. As financial audiences become more informed and more sceptical, only content that delivers real value earns attention. Several clear trends now define high-performing financial content.
#1 Education Comes Before Promotion
Fintech brands have learned that selling too early weakens trust. Audiences want to understand a product, a market, or a risk before they are asked to act.
Educational fintech content performs better because it reduces uncertainty. It answers real questions, explains complex mechanics, and helps readers make informed decisions. This approach is particularly effective in regulated industries where confidence is earned through clarity. For example, an article explaining how interest rates affect borrowing behaviour will consistently outperform a product page advertising a new lending feature. The education builds authority. The conversion follows later. Fintechs that lead with teaching are perceived as partners, not vendors.
Fintech content is designed to be read. Headlines focus on outcomes and insight rather than categories. Structure supports scanning, with clear subheadings and short paragraphs. Most importantly, fintech content has editorial intent. Each piece knows what it is trying to do. Educate, explain, or persuade but rarely all three at once.
#2 Thought Leadership Replaces Generic Commentary
Generic financial commentary is everywhere. Market recaps, surface-level trend pieces, and reactive opinion articles are easy to produce and easy to ignore.
High-performing fintech content focuses on original insight. This means explaining why something matters, what others are missing, or how a trend impacts decision-makers. Thought leadership is not about being first, it is about being useful.
Original analysis builds authority faster than repeating headlines because it positions the brand as a source of understanding rather than a source of noise. This is why well-researched, long-form content consistently outperforms short reactive posts in engagement and credibility metrics.
#3 Brands Behave Like Publishers
Leading fintechs no longer treat content as a marketing afterthought. They operate like media companies.
This means having:
- Clear editorial calendars
- Defined content pillars
- Consistent publishing frequency
- Formal voice and tone guidelines
Content is planned strategically rather than produced opportunistically and each piece has a role within a broader narrative. This publisher mindset results in stronger brand recognition and more durable audience relationships.
#4 Transparency Is Used as a Differentiator
Modern financial audiences expect transparency, especially around fees, risks, and limitations. Fintech content increasingly addresses these topics directly rather than burying them in disclaimers. A trend we love is when fintechs notify you of the specific terms and condition changes rather than making you sift through pages and pages to see a change. By emailing the consumer to tell them exactly what changed, you build trust and reduce frustration.
Transparency is no longer just a compliance requirement; it is a competitive advantage. If you believe your fintech is transparent, always ask yourself how.
#5 Depth Outperforms Volume
The trend toward long-form financial content continues to accelerate. In depth articles, detailed explainers, and structured guides outperform high-frequency, low-substance posts on both SEO and GEO.
Depth signals expertise and aligns with how platforms like Medium and search engines evaluate quality. A single well-researched article can generate authority, traffic, and leads long after publication. Fintech brands that prioritise fewer, higher-quality pieces consistently outperform those chasing output alone.
At Contentworks Agency, we are often asked the same question by finance brands investing in SEO and content marketing. How do we get our traders and investors to trust us? When it comes to marketing, the answer is EEAT which stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. EEAT is a quality framework used by Google to evaluate content.
Read about EEAT and how Google evaluates content.
What to Avoid If You Want Credibility
Many financial brands unintentionally damage their own credibility through habits that feel safe internally but erode trust externally. These issues are rarely about talent or regulation. They are usually the result of outdated processes and unclear strategy.
Below are the most common credibility killers in financial content and why they matter.
Leaning Too Hard On AI Generated Content
Yes, we said it. AI has its place in modern marketing and that’s certainly true for fintechs. It creates workflows, supports backend development and streamlines procedures. But for content marketing it can produce generic, one size fits all content. Your competitor has it, their competitor has it and everyone using ChatGPT to create “a dynamic brand voice for a fintech” has it.
How not to use AI for content:
- Don’t rely on AI as your sole content creator, always include human writers or at least editors.
- Never skip having a style guide because without it, AI will produce inconsistent tone and messaging.
- Ignore regulatory or compliance review as AI can’t guarantee accuracy or adherence.
- Fact check everything, AI is renowned for inventing stats and sources.
Overusing Buzzwords Without Explanation
Buzzwords create the illusion of sophistication (to company shareholders not the rest of us!) but deliver no real meaning. Terms like “innovative”, “cutting edge”, “next generation”, or our favourite “disruptive” are widely used and rarely supported by evidence. When readers encounter vague language, they assume that the brand does not fully understand its own product, it is copying its predecessors or is deliberately avoiding clarity.
To maintain credibility:
- Replace buzzwords with specific outcomes
- Explain what is actually different or better
- Support claims with data, examples, or use cases
If you have described your fintech as “disruptive” we will ask you why, how and what it disrupts!
Hiding Weak Ideas Behind Long Sentences
Complex sentence structure is often mistaken for intellectual depth. In reality, long sentences usually hide uncertainty or weak positioning. Financial audiences are highly sensitive to unnecessary complexity and if an idea is sound, it can be explained clearly.
Strong fintech writing breaks ideas into shorter, purposeful sentences that guide the reader step by step. We also like to use infographics, videos, charts, bullets, graphs and other visuals that break up content and make it easier to understand.
Letting Compliance Remove Meaning
Compliance is essential, but when it becomes the final editor and gatekeeper rather than an early collaborator, content suffers.
Over edited compliance language often results in:
- Passive voice replacing clear statements
- Important information being buried or softened
- Entire paragraphs added to protect against unlikely interpretations
When content feels defensive, readers sense it immediately. Trust declines because the brand appears more concerned with protecting itself than informing the audience.
Writing as if the Reader Is a Legal Expert
Another common mistake is assuming the reader understands financial or legal terminology simply because the industry does. Using unexplained jargon creates friction and signals indifference to the reader’s experience.
Credible fintech content:
- Introduces technical terms only when necessary
- Defines them once in plain language
- Spells out acronyms if they are used
- Returns quickly to human, outcome-focused explanations
Treating Compliance and Marketing as Opposing Forces
The most successful fintechs do not see compliance as an obstacle to good content. They see it as part of the process.
High-performing teams:
- Involve compliance early in content planning
- Align on acceptable language before writing begins
- Create shared guidelines for tone, risk disclosure, and claims
When marketing and compliance work together from the start, content remains clear, accurate, and confident. The result is writing that feels transparent rather than defensive and authoritative rather than evasive.
Getting the Tone Right in Practice
Strong fintech content writing is the result of process, not inspiration. Before finalising fintech content we ask the following questions:
- Would a non expert understand this on first read?
- Does this explain something real rather than describe something abstract?
- Is this content helpful and informative?
- Would this sound natural if spoken aloud?
- Can I back up the claims I’ve made in this content?
A practical rule used by many financial content teams is to remove 15 to 20 percent of words during editing. If clarity improves, the original draft sounded too much like a bank.
Our View
Writing like a fintech is not about sounding casual or trend driven. It is about respect for the fact that financial decisions are complex, high stakes, and often stressful.
Modern financial audiences compare providers, question claims, check sources, and expect transparency as a baseline. And they should. Brands that publish vague promises, bloated sentences, or institutional posturing quickly lose relevance. This is why fintech brands that invest strategically in language consistently outperform those that cling to legacy voice. They see higher engagement, stronger brand recall, and more qualified leads because their content answers real questions instead of hiding behind formality.
Your grandparents likely never changed banks. Why would they? They had always banked with them, knew the cashiers, withdrew and deposited money at the local branch and had no need to switch. The 90s bank voice was built for a world of limited choice, low transparency, and captive audiences. That world no longer exists. Today’s financial consumers expect brands to explain how products work, why risks exist, and what trade-offs matter. They reward those that do so with attention and loyalty and move away from those that do not.
In today’s landscape, writing like a 1990s bank is not just outdated, its commercially risky. Book a free Zoom call with our team to talk about your fintech content marketing.