Question

What do you understand by building awareness and how does it apply to financial institutions such as banks?

Answer 1

So, you officially have your own conveniently located office inside a bank or credit union. Any day now, a flood of customers that came in to open a checking account or make a deposit are going to step into your office and ask for help, right? Unfortunately for us, financial institution clients are opting to work online or another alternate method to bank. That makes the financial professional’s job to create face-to-face introductions more difficult.

In the spirit of helping you build your new partnership, let’s explore some fresh approaches to attract window shoppers and create awareness within your financial institution.

GRABBING THEIR ATTENTION

A new business card and nameplate on your door are decent investments to attract the naturally curious shopper. However, passive marketing won’t establish meaningful relationships with the bankers or their clients. Here’s some more active methods.

PRESS RELEASE

A great way to build synergies between your existing practice and the new financial institution relationship is to draft a press release for existing clients. Press releases can often be published at no cost in local newspapers or trade publications. If you’re a member of IFP, reach out to our staff at IFP Institutional Services to assist in drafting the release and gaining the appropriate marketing approvals for the message.

INTERNAL NEWSLETTERS

First, determine who handles the institution’s newsletters or direct mail. Even if it means throwing in a few bucks to help out with overhead costs, reaching out to build awareness with the institution’s customers is a big win.

By working with the bank’s management team, determine if you can ensure placements in each newsletter. Again, we can assist with compliant, approved messages, articles or investing tips for the clients or members of your financial institution.

WEB PRESENCE

Secondly, do you have a presence on the institution’s website? Another way to build general awareness is to provide content that explains your services, your method for working with bank clients and your practice tenants. If you have not had this conversation with your bank or credit union, contact us to learn about how we can create that page on their website or link the financial institution clients to your personal website.

In the same way you’ve worked to integrate messaging about your practice into the institution’s newsletter, the website can serve in the same way to build awareness. Articles that you’ve added to your personal website or which have used for the newsletter can be used to create short, excerpted soundbites that can be used in rotating messages on the bank’s website.

SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE

Third, understand the value and importance of building your social media presence on Facebook or LinkedIn. According to the IFP Design Group, many financial professionals either have a lackluster online presence or nothing at all. Work with us to learn how to create “social media events” that draw a closer link to you and the banks employees and customers.

Folks, the digital age isn’t going anywhere, so it’s time to revamp your websites, social media strategy, and contact plans in 2018.

KEEPING THEIR ATTENTION

Once your social media presence has been established to capitalize on your role within the financial institution, it’s important to realize this is not a “one and done” strategy. It’s essential that you maintain an ongoing, active engagement to this new population of prospects at the bank or credit union.

Once again, reach out to the individual that directs marketing at the institution. Obtain a list of client or member events for the coming year. Include all community events where the financial institution is a sponsor. Attend these bank-sponsored events and start publishing messages on Facebook or LinkedIn regarding upcoming events to drum up interest.

This helps create a stronger connection to the bank and serves to engage your prior clients and create potential referrals or introductions with key bankers.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

The ability to create a continual “drip campaign” with your clients as well as the customers of the financial institution can ensure building a positive image for your practice. Allow us to assist you in building a marketing plan that build meaningful awareness and greater visibility for your practice in the coming year.

The Needs for Security Awareness

Obviously, just about every industry and market segment imaginable needs to have some sort of level of Security Awareness that goes along with it. But in terms of the financial sector, consider some of these qualitative reasons to have Security Awareness:

• The Cyber attacker of today are constantly finding sophisticated means in which to penetrate financial and banking networks. Thus, a breached network can lead to online fraud identity theft and corporate bank account takeovers. Fraud committed against company bank accounts is a growing threat and cybercriminals can drain funds from a company’s bank account in minutes.
• Over the last 10 years, financial hacking has evolved from rogue individuals trying to showcase their abilities to organized cybercrime groups with covert access to large amounts of funding and resources at their disposal. As a result of this, financial institutions must go far beyond the requirements as set forth by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley-Act. It is also important to keep in mind that employee’s banks or brokerage firms can also pose the largest threat to a financial institution’s Cyber security.
• The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) estimated that more than 500 million financial records were hacked into over the past 12 months. Major publicized incidents reveal that financial institutions, particularly those in the United States, are a highly sought-after target by Cyber attackers seeking to obtain financial rewards.

Now, consider these quantitative reasons to have Security Awareness:

• In terms of the major financial institutions these are the number of financial accounts which have been breached:
  • JP Morgan Chase (83 Million accounts)
  • Heartland Payment Systems (1.34 Million accounts)
  • Global Payment Systems, Inc. (1.5 Million accounts)
  • Citigroup (360,000 accounts)
• The use of Trojan Horse viruses to infect computers used in the financial sector hit an astonishing 4.1 million computers. Out of this total, 1,467 financial institutions were intentionally targeted worldwide.
• The Depository Trust Clearing Corporation (aka DTCC) reported an increase of 183% in terms of Domain Name Server attacks upon the various financial institutions.
• According to a recent research study, it was discovered that many financial institutions remain over confident in their Security Awareness programs, but when they are implemented fail to deliver the expected results. For example:
  • 74% of those financial institutions surveyed are confident in the Security Awareness programs they currently have in place, BUT only 30% of their third-party vendors are actually in compliance to undergo any Security Awareness training, and only 47% of actual employees have undergone any kind of formal training program.
• Consider some of these other alarming statistics:
  • On average, banks experience about 85 attempted Cyber-attacks each year;
  • From the perspective of the CEO:
    • Only 13% would invest in a Cyber security training program
    • Only 28% would implement safeguards and controls to prevent future Cyber-attacks;
    • Only 43% would invest in extra Security technology in order to ensure    the safety of their customer’s private information and data.
• Finally, it has been deemed that the employees themselves constitute about 70% of a financial institution’s overall Cyber security risk.