What is financial copywriting?
Financial copywriting is a form of copywriting that is specifically focused on finance. As financial content often contains relatively complex jargon, a copywriter specialising in finance is normally required. A copywriter can write in a way that explains the products or services to customers clearly and also makes sure that the correct information is included.
What is a financial copywriter?
A copywriter is simply a writer for a business, and often wears many hats. A copywriter can be any content producer for a business but often has a specific niche or specialisation.
Copywriters can manage:
Websites
Social media accounts
Internal documents
Email campaigns
A financial copywriter therefore is simply a copywriter who works for finance brands and produces financial content. Finance companies will often need content to attract new clients and customers, and from here, help to explain how the products and services work, ensuring that a customer understands everything.
The benefit of financial copywriting
In the finance niche, there is a particular need for financial topics to be explained to customers, as often these concepts can be complex or difficult to understand.
The current state of the world means that financial literacy is being overtaken by technological innovation. For example, according to the Global Findex Database in 2021, in some South Asian economies, over half of unbanked adults have a mobile phone.
Global Findex Database 2021; Gallup World Poll
This means that their first step into banking is therefore likely to be digital. As this wave of unbanked populations begins to use the internet for their finances, financial content online will become more important than ever.
Mobile money accounts are also on the rise, which further increases the need for financial content that is easy to understand and accessible.
Global Findex Database 2021, Mobile Money accounts
Importance of accuracy in financial copywriting
Financial copywriting has a special quality as it requires content to be accurate for several reasons. Inaccurate financial content can be damaging to a brand in several ways.
YMYL Content
The first reason is to appease Google’s SEO requirement for Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) content.
Content that is considered YMYL is anything that could theoretically change a reader’s life — for better or for worse. Google puts this extra safeguard into certain pages to ensure that people are not being fed potentially dangerous information. Anything financial is considered YMYL content, as bad advice could result in someone losing a significant amount of money.
Other examples of what Google considers YMYL content include:
Medicine and health advice
Law
News and current events
Shopping or products
Housing
Anything flagged as YMYL has a much higher standard for SEO and accuracy. If content is found to be incorrect, Google will punish the site much more severely and even delist the page, in what it considers to be a protective measure. This is why financial copywriters must always ensure that their work is accurate.
FCA compliance
Another crucial aspect of financial copywriting is ensuring that content is compliant with the Financial Conduct Authority’s guidance on financial promotions on social media. A financial copywriter will make sure that all content that is made public is compliant with the FCA’s guidelines.
In summary, the guidelines state that promotions must provide “balanced information about the benefits and risks in a way that is clear, fair and not misleading.”
As finance is changing constantly, particularly with new industries in cryptocurrency, it is important for financial copywriters to stay on top of the FCA’s latest updates and ensure that their content is compliant.
Conclusion
Financial copywriting balances many skills. Firstly, a knowledge of finance is required in order to understand the client’s products and services. From here, the writing skills are required to explain these concepts to everyday consumers or clients, who might not be experts on the financial language used in the industry.
Financial copywriters, if writing for SEO reasons or marketing, must also tailor their language to fit with not only YMYL requirements set by Google but also ensure that the copy is FCA compliant.
If you are looking for a financial copywriter or financial copywriting services, then at Finnus we can provide this. We produce SEO-focused articles for finance brands, as well as marketing materials such as white papers and email campaigns. Contact us today and see what we can do for you.
