As fintech companies grapple with regulatory, fraud and compliance challenges, Sumsub’s CMO, Julia Kim, wants the marketing to cut through.
Financial Promoter: How would you describe your marketing approach?
Julia Kim: Ensuring our marketing objectives align with the company’s overarching goals is vital. From a marketing standpoint, we have identified key pillars to drive these objectives forward. Our primary focus is on product adoption and expansion across multiple regions. The majority of our campaigns are focused on relevant target personas, such as compliance officers, anti-fraud specialists, chief risk officers, product owners, financial crime units, and all the influencers around these roles.
FP: What is the over-riding umbrella theme which ties together your marketing?
JK: We create brand awareness campaigns delivered through multiple channels across PR, social media and paid advertising, among others. These campaigns are centered around our mission to build a safe, people-friendly, inclusive digital future.
FP: What brand awareness work are you focussed on right now?
JK: We have a bunch of interesting stuff coming. We are driving our “power of one” concept. It is a global campaign and will make our B2B and B2C audiences aware of Sumsub and of the mission that drives us. It will be an integrated campaign powered through owned media, YouTube, social media, podcasts, paid campaigns and PR. The second major campaign will be our annual identity fraud report which has become a trend setter within the industry. It was quoted by our tier one media such as the Financial Times, CNBC and Forbes. This year, we will continue to share internal stats from our Product Analytics team from this report.
FP: On which broad subjects are your campaigns focussed?
JK: Fintech is a complex and broad industry that spans payments, insurance, digital banking, trading and other sectors. Fraud is a significant issue in fintech right now, with regulations becoming more stringent and fraudsters more sophisticated.
Many businesses are seeking a robust compliance stack. We are not focussed solely on KYC solutions, our offering includes transaction monitoring, anti-fraud and compliance solutions. We have been doing campaigns to promote our ‘non doc verification’ offering, which has been rolled out across several markets. This solution allows you to verify your identity in just 4.5 seconds with minimal user data, such as your CPF number in Brazil, without needing any physical documents.
FP: What are the regulatory considerations in your sector affecting your marketing?
JK: We are mindful of the Travel Rule, a recent global regulation in the crypto industry, which is coming into force across multiple jurisdictions. Many players in the market are unfamiliar with some of these rules, so we are heavily focusing on market education through thought leadership, as well as through our educational courses.
We are looking at the common trends in fraud such as deepfakes and identify fraud. We will be mapping the statistics year on year. Major industries we are targeting are fintech, crypto, and e-gaming.
FP: How would you describe Sumsub’s key markets?
JK: In some senses, we are a B2B2C company. For instance, while serving a payment company, we must deliver a smooth and seamless UX for its clients. It’s crucial for Sumsub to create an equally fast and effortless onboarding process for users, whether from Africa, Asia or Europe and beyond, without verification hurdles.
FP: What about events?
JK: As for events, in addition to Money 20/20, we have a constant presence at Token 2049 – we attended one at the start of the year in Dubai and we will be at Token 2049 in Singapore this September. We also attend major blockchain events like the Nordic Blockchain, Consensus, Bitcoin Amsterdam and DeFi conferences to present our Travel Rule solution. E-gaming is also a major focus industry for us so we participate in the SIGMA and SBC summits.