Budget trends

Chapter 4 Budget Trends

Financial services marketers can often find themselves the first to be targeted with a budget challenge. Unlike other industries, the creative portion of the marketing budget can be considered discretionary spend. We asked respondents what their budget was in 2018, if there had been any change to that budget this year, and whether they find their budget a challenge.

The size of budget varied across our respondents. Most (63%) had a budget of at least £1 million in 2018, and 36% managed more than £3 million. The chart below shows budget broken down by sector. Corporate and Investment Banking have the deepest pockets with nearly 70% managing a budget of over £3 million. Life and Pension providers were the next wealthiest with 57% holding a budget of over £3 million and the rest managing over £1 million. Meanwhile 36% of Asset Managers and only 18% of Private Banking and Wealth Management firms had a budget of over £3 million, while a third of Fintechs have a budget of less than £250,000.

IN THIS CHAPTER we will look at how budgets were impacted in 2019, and to what extent budget is a challenge.

How were budgets impacted in 2019?

Despite economic and political uncertainty, 56% of marketers saw no change to their budget in 2019, while 22% were allocated more. However, this did depend on how much budget marketers had in the first place. Nearly a third of those with a budget of over £3 million experienced a budget cut, while 38% of those with a budget between £250,000 and £500,000 received an increase.

To what extent is budget a challenge?

A third of respondents cited securing budget as a key marketing challenge. This was especially so for those in Asset Management, General Insurance and Retail Banking, whereas none of our respondents from Corporate and Investment Banking felt it was a challenge.