While market volatility is a key topic in boardrooms for its effect on fund performance, it’s also reshaping marketing strategies as 44% of marketers have overhauled their core messaging in response to geopolitical and economic shifts.
Research from Opinium, with 60% of responses coming from FP Live! 2025 attendees, shows that geopolitical uncertainty is reshaping marketing strategies. In particular, 42% of marketers are running campaigns tailored to today’s political climate while 36% have cancelled or re-scoped activity due to political developments.
Alexa Nightingale, global head of financial services at Opinium, said: “The results underscore a blunt truth: in a jittery macro-environment retention is the real battleground. Forty-four per cent of the marcomms leaders we surveyed have already rewritten their core narratives to reflect elections, conflicts and inflation shocks, confirming how quickly sentiment can flip.”
However, geopolitical uncertainty isn’t the only challenge as marketers are also facing tighter budget scrutiny, with 30% reviewing 2025 budgets, 24% cutting spend, and 20% scaling back media investment.
As a result, more than half (52%) of respondents cited limited budgets as their biggest barrier. Budget constraints are also putting pressure on resources, with 28% reporting understaffing and teams increasingly expected to “do more with less.”
Lack of strategic thinking time (42%), market downturn (40%) and priority shifts (36%) were also cited as top barriers for marketers, according to Opinium.
Despite clear challenges, AI is creating real opportunities by delivering operational benefits that help financial services marcomms teams overcome persistent barriers like limited budgets, small teams and lack of time for strategic thinking.
In fact, 70% cite increased efficiency and productivity as AI’s biggest impact, with 24% crediting AI with unlocking meaningful cost savings. This suggests that AI’s current value lies primarily in driving internal optimisation and enabling teams to ‘do more with less’.
However, many potential uses of AI remain untapped as just 14% of marketers use it for customer targeting and 10% for CRM, which signals significant white space for customer-centric innovation. Meanwhile, AI’s role is still largely functional, with only 4% saying it’s reshaping team culture.
Nightingale added: “It’s increasingly evident that financial services marcomms teams are attempting the corporate equivalent of spinning plates at speed. They are being asked to defend and grow market share in a world jolted by geopolitical tremors while simultaneously mastering a wave of AI. As delegates at the recent conference acknowledged, the pace can be dizzying.”