Five Lessons from the 2026 Mumbrella Financial Services Summit

The biggest challenge in Australian financial services marketing is not creative, media or measurement. It is getting strong thinking through the business and into market without losing its edge. 

These are the five lessons I am taking into client work. 

1. The mood is worse than the market, and budgets are following the mood 

The macro session opened with a striking contradiction. Australian consumer sentiment is at recession lows, but Australia is not in a recession. 

People are still spending on furniture, clothing, recreation and overseas travel. Unemployment is around 4.5%, close to a 50 year low. Wages are growing at about 3.2%. The latest profit season was the strongest in roughly four years. Credit card balances are manageable and mortgage stress remains low. 

Inflation is still stubborn. It has stayed above the RBA target for four years, and more rate moves are possible. Housing is also softening, with prices forecast to fall about 7% from peak to trough. These pressures are real. But a weaker housing market does not mean consumers have stopped spending. 

The strategic implication: the data supports continued investment. Discretionary spending is holding and growth is ahead. The pessimism is louder than the evidence. Cutting brand spend because the mood feels weak is how brands lose ground for years. 

2. In financial services, the marketing isn't the hard part 

One session made a blunt point: in financial services, marketing is not really about marketing. 

The logic is simple. The playing field is level. Everyone has data, similar training, the same AI tools and the same core frameworks, including How Brands Grow and The Long and the Short of It. Access to knowledge is not the advantage. 

What separates good from great is political savvy and persuasion. 

The iceberg metaphor captured it well. Advertising, brand platforms and sponsorships sit above the water. Most of a financial services marketer's time sits below it, lining up stakeholders, answering objections and building support. As Carla Harris, former Vice Chairman at Morgan Stanley, put it: work cannot speak for you, so you must speak for the work. 

The session outlined four stakeholder types that anyone in a regulated business will recognise: 

• The Risk Steward protects the downside. Show the risk of doing nothing. Raise brand, regulatory and delivery risks before they do, and bring a clear way to reverse course. Never say, "Trust us." 
• The Alignment Seeker wants to know the idea can survive the politics. Show who you have spoken to and how you handled their concerns. Avoid big reveals. 
• The Decision Bottleneck is overloaded, not indecisive. Bring three options, recommend one and explain why the others should be ruled out. Do not workshop the answer in the decision meeting. 
• The Value Protector may seem territorial, but they are protecting their area. Give them a real part of the work to shape, and use their numbers. 

If you have ever said, "I do not do politics," this may explain why your last three ideas went nowhere. 

3. Patience compounds: what the Allianz brand transformation proves 

The Allianz case study made one thing clear: changing a financial services brand takes time. 

The diagnosis was not glamorous. The average customer gets 2.3 quotes, which puts a premium brand beside cheaper options. First choice preference was only 5, well below the level needed for growth. Just 11% of the market is open to switching in any year. That made retention and pricing across four million customers more important than acquisition. 

The insight did not come from research. It came from the pricing team. They were checking APRA claims data against policies to make sure customers were properly covered. Nobody had asked them to do it. That behaviour became the platform: when expertise meets compassion, you find care. 

Then came the step most businesses skip. "Care You Can Count On" ran inside Allianz for six months before customers saw it. It showed up in a Care Hub, a Care Award, HR programs and signs around the building. Staff made it real before the advertising launched. 

The results were clear. NPS rose from 2.3 to 14 in twelve months. The team spent twelve months on strategy and five months building the ad. The budget did not grow. Extra media money came from cutting ambassador programs, sponsorships and duplicate advertising. Econometric modelling helped defend the choice with the CFO. 

Two lessons sit beneath the result. First, consistency compounds. One idea held for years beats five forgettable ones. Second, position matters more than talent. Allianz had five CMOs in three years before this leader. Staying power came from being part of the system: a monthly board meeting, a monthly executive meeting and a standing forum for data, finance and marketing. Decisions were made together, not from inside the marketing department. 

4. Engagement is the metric that holds up in the real world 

The sharpest benchmark from the engagement panel was three minutes of engagement for every $1,000 spent. Longer engagement links directly to larger cheque sizes. For complex financial products, the usual seven minute benchmark for long form video may be too short. 

Search is changing fast. One publisher on the panel now gets 10 to 15% of traffic from ChatGPT, compared with about 25% from Google. This is a shift in the mix, not a full replacement. Search intent still needs a product to meet it. But the content that earns visibility is changing. 

Large language models favour clear, original content. Brands that published calculators, their own data and useful summaries after recent budget changes were picked up by AI tools. Brands that repeated the usual category commentary were not. 

The rule is simple: if you want to stand out, stop sounding like everyone else. 

Financial services brands keep crowding around the same message. Two years ago it was ESG. Today it is private markets. Strong creative is so rare that it stands out at once. Playing it safe can make a brand invisible. 

It is not enough to reach people in the right place. They also need to be ready to listen. Email still works because people use it for business. Social media is where their attention is elsewhere. 

5. Humour raises the bar you then have to clear 

The humour session was the most entertaining and the most practical. 

Humour makes a brand easier to remember. It also raises the stakes. The product must deliver on the joke. You can only joke about fees if you actually remove them. A bad joke is worse than no joke. 

The case studies showed why it works. ANZ's Barbara succeeded because the character was proudly awful. She voiced every fear customers have about banks, and the performance was excellent. Some of the best lines were improvised. ASB's long running campaign in New Zealand worked through national pride and relatability. Its improvised moments became part of everyday language. 

Three practical rules came out of it: 

• Bring funny people in early. Include them in the pitch and the testing. A flat reading can kill a good joke before it gets a chance. 
• Get the script first, then leave room to play. Budget pressure will squeeze this time. Protect it during the shoot. 
• Bring risk into the room. Their job is not to kill the idea. It is to find a safe way to run it. One campaign using fire was paused during bushfire season, but a version without fire was ready. 

Plan for longevity too. Humour depends on surprise, and surprise fades. The board question is not, "Is this funny?" It is, "Will people still like it when it is no longer surprising?" 

What this means for financial services brands in 2026 

Put all five lessons together and one point stands out. 

In financial services, bold creative starts with better decisions inside the business. 

The ideas and data already exist. What is missing is an internal system that lets a strong idea survive twelve months of stakeholder review without becoming bland. Allianz did not win because it had a better brief. It won because the platform was true inside the business before it went outside, and because someone stayed long enough to protect it. 

At GHO, our process is Discover, Define, Develop and Deliver. It moves from logic to magic. The Summit made one point clear: much of the Deliver phase in financial services happens inside the business. Alignment is not extra work before the real work. It is the work.