How to Choose a PR agency for Fintech

By Aidan Sowa, CEO and Founder, Frontier Industries | October 2026

In 1837, a panic ran through American banks because depositors could not tell a sound institution from a loud one, and loudness won deposits right up until it lost everything. Your market rebuilt the same problem with better design. A fintech brand can look trustworthy in an app store screenshot while its licensing, safeguarding, and disclosure habits go unexamined. Edelman (2025) put global trust in financial services at 64 percent, respectable on paper, yet the sector still ranked toward the lower end of the seventeen industries measured. In money, being believed is the licence to operate.

Key numbers for this decision:

I. Discrimen

Looking like a bank and being run like one are different stories

Standfirst: Consumers lend you their salaries on the strength of signals. Regulators check the signals against the paperwork.

Start with the distinction that decides fintech reputations. There is the story of innovation, speed, elegance, the underdog against the incumbents. And there is the story of stewardship, licences held, funds safeguarded, audits passed, complaints handled. Consumer fintech marketing lives almost entirely in the first story. Every serious setback in this sector, every enforcement action, every partner bank exit, every frozen account scandal, lives in the second.

An agency that only knows the first story will keep you famous and fragile. The firm you want treats stewardship as headline material: it can write a licensing announcement that a compliance officer would approve and a customer would understand, and it knows why the second audience is harder. Ask in selection how the agency would publicise something unglamorous, a new state licence, a completed audit, a safeguarding change. Their instinct on dull material predicts their value on dangerous material.

II. Machina

Fintech news is produced at the junction of product, policy, and enforcement

Standfirst: Three desks cover you, and they do not read each other drafts.

Map the machinery before you hire into it. The technology desk covers your product and your funding. The policy desk covers your regulators, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, state licensing regimes, and the rulemakings that can reprice your business model in a comment period. The enforcement desk covers actions, settlements, and consent orders, and it reads your marketing claims with a prosecutor generosity, which is to say none.

Your agency must work all three desks with one consistent set of facts. Claims tuned for the technology desk, effortless growth, money moved instantly, no friction anywhere, get quoted back by the other two desks when a regulator asks whether customers were misled. Consistency under cross examination is the job. It extends to your funding and growth narrative, where numbers given to journalists have a way of being compared, later, with numbers given to regulators and partners. A disciplined agency treats every published figure as a permanent record with multiple future readers, because in financial services that is literally what it is. Ask candidates how they maintain a single claims register across product, policy, and corporate communications. If the answer is a shared drive and good intentions, keep interviewing. Companion reading across adjacent regulated categories sits in the resources library.

III. Exemplum

The fintech brands that endure brief their agencies like disclosure counsel

Standfirst: Their boldest public statements have already survived the review that would frighten yours.

Consider the cautionary tale the whole sector studied. In 2024 the Securities and Exchange Commission charged DraftKings and imposed a 200,000 dollar civil penalty after the company own outside public relations firm posted material nonpublic information, continuing sales growth figures, to the chief executive personal social media accounts before public release. The posts were deleted once noticed. The charge stood anyway, because Regulation FD treats the agency actions as the company own.

Read that twice. The regulator did not allege fraud by the company communications team. It alleged a control failure, and the control that failed sat inside a vendor. Fintech firms that endure internalise this: their agencies operate inside the same disclosure controls, approval chains, and spokesperson lists as employees. Ask every candidate about their material information hygiene, who can post, who approves, what is never drafted outside counsel review. A firm that has never thought about this is a penalty looking for a date.

IV. Damnum

In fintech, a communications error can become a supervisory finding

Standfirst: Other sectors apologise and move on. You may get examined.

Now the cost ledger, which in this industry is denominated in more than sentiment. A misleading claim about yields, fees, or safeguarding can trigger consumer complaints, regulator inquiries, partner bank reviews, and app store consequences in the same week. Your distribution often depends on regulated partners whose risk committees read your press coverage as part of ongoing due diligence. A splashy, careless headline does not just embarrass you. It can endanger the banking partnership your product cannot operate without.

The trust numbers explain why partners are jumpy. Banking has climbed to become the most trusted financial subsector, gaining fifteen points since 2015 (Edelman, 2025), while fintech and digital payments sit around 50 percent trust, and digital assets far lower. Your partners lend you trust they spent a decade rebuilding. They will withdraw it at the first sign you are spending it carelessly. Choose an agency whose caution your partners bank can recognise as its own dialect.

V. Genus

The controlling variable is whether the agency can operate inside financial disclosure discipline

Standfirst: Creativity is abundant in this market. Controlled speech under regulatory exposure is not.

When you score candidates, put one variable on top: demonstrated ability to run communications inside a regulated disclosure regime. That means fluency in what material information is, how quiet periods work, why forward looking statements carry safe harbour language, and how consumer financial claims are substantiated under advertising rules enforced by the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general. Fintech punishes improvisation more reliably than any other technology category except health.

Interrogate the variable with a scenario. A draft release states that customer funds are fully protected. Ask the candidate to walk you through every word they would challenge and every approval they would require. The walk is the interview.

VI. Segmentum

Payments, lending, wealth, and infrastructure fintechs are tried in different courts

Standfirst: A payments firm answers to merchants and partner banks. A lender answers to borrowers and the CFPB. Different defendants, different evidence.

Segment the shortlist by your regulatory centre of gravity. Payments companies live on partner trust and merchant economics, and their proof is volume, uptime, and certification such as PCI DSS compliance. Lending companies live under fair lending scrutiny, where marketing language about approval odds and pricing is effectively underwriting communication, and one cheerful claim can echo into an examination. Wealth and investing platforms answer to securities regulators and to customers whose losses are personal, which makes performance claims the most sensitive sentences in the industry.

Infrastructure providers selling to banks face the longest court of all: the vendor risk process, where your public record is an exhibit and your agency consistency over years is weighed like a control. Ask candidates which of these courts most of their fintech work is tried in, and make them show outcomes there. The scoping method on the public relations services page starts from regulatory centre of gravity for exactly this reason.

VII. Occasio

The opening is the trust deficit between fintech and the banks it needs

Standfirst: Half the market trusts your category. The half that does not includes your future partners risk committee.

Here is the ground nobody has fully claimed. Fintech trust hovers near the halfway mark while the product quality of the best firms is demonstrably high. The gap is a communications failure more than a product failure: the sector publicises launches and funding while underpublishing the stewardship evidence that risk minded audiences actually weigh, audit completions, safeguarding mechanics, complaint resolution data, licensing milestones.

An agency that sees the gap will propose a stewardship publishing programme in selection, unprompted. It will treat your compliance calendar as an editorial calendar. It will know that a chief risk officer at a partner bank forwarding your audit announcement to her committee is worth more than a consumer feature. If no candidate raises this without being led, you have learned that the market opening will stay open, and your competitors agency may find it first.

There is a content asset hiding in the same gap. Fintech buyers, consumer and enterprise alike, search for explanations at moments of anxiety: a held payment, a failed verification, a market drop. The brands that publish calm, precise, findable explanations of how money movement, holds, and protections actually work collect trust at the exact moment competitors are buying advertising. An agency with the stewardship instinct will build you that library deliberately, reviewed by compliance, written for frightened humans. It is the least glamorous proposal you will hear in selection, and very possibly the most valuable one.

VIII. Structura

Approval chains are a feature: hire the agency that designs them with you

Standfirst: In fintech, the fastest safe process beats the fastest process, every quarter, forever.

Structure in this sector means control architecture. Insist on named approvers for regulated claims, a written social media protocol that covers executives personal accounts, a claims register with substantiation files, and embargo handling that assumes screenshots exist. Insist also on knowing exactly who at the agency can speak to a journalist during an enforcement story, because that day the roster becomes the company.

Ask how the agency staffs the unglamorous middle: the person who maintains the licensing milestone tracker, the person who monitors regulator publications each morning, the person who keeps your boilerplate accurate as licences and partners change. Boilerplate drift, an outdated claim about coverage or custody sitting in a hundred releases, is a classic fintech own goal. The team described on the industries team page treats that maintenance as billable, reportable work, which is the only way it reliably gets done.

IX. Consilium

Select with a disclosure drill and a claims audit, scored before any creative work

Standfirst: Fintech selection should feel more like a controls review than a talent show, because that is what the relationship will be.

Give each finalist two tasks. First, a timed drill: at a set hour, hand them a scenario in which draft marketing copy containing material figures has been posted early by a junior staffer, and require their first hour action plan and draft corrective language. Second, a claims audit of your live website and app store listing, with every unsubstantiated or risky sentence flagged and rewritten. Score both with your compliance lead in the room.

Close with a pilot tied to one stewardship milestone, a licence, an audit, a safeguarding upgrade. How an agency handles your dullest important news predicts how it will handle your worst.

X. Quaesita

Questions buyers ask before they sign

Does our agency need financial services experience, or is technology experience enough?

For anything touching customer money, financial services experience is the safer default. The failure modes, disclosure, substantiation, partner sensitivity, are financial failure modes wearing a technology costume, and they are learned in this industry or not at all.

Can an agency help during a regulatory inquiry?

It can manage the communications perimeter: holding statements, employee guidance, customer messaging, and media handling, always under your counsel direction. What it must never do is shape facts. Ask candidates where they draw that line and listen for a crisp answer.

How do we promote high yields or low fees safely?

With substantiation files, precise conditions, and review by compliance before any drafting begins. A good agency will slow this sentence down deliberately and will tell you when a claim should not be made at all. That refusal is a service, not an obstacle.

Should executives be active on social media in fintech?

Yes, with controls that would embarrass a consumer brand team: pre approved topic lanes, no figures, no forward looking statements, and a deletion and disclosure protocol for errors. The DraftKings penalty exists because those controls were absent where it mattered.

What should we measure in fintech communications?

Partner and regulator audience outcomes: risk committee feedback, quality of trade coverage, accuracy of how your claims are repeated, and movement in enterprise pipeline stages. Consumer reach matters, but it is the second ledger, not the first.

How do we handle a viral complaint about frozen funds?

Acknowledge fast, explain the process honestly without discussing the individual case, publish the review pathway, and follow with systemic fixes when they are real. Your agency should have this sequence pre drafted, because improvisation during a trust event reads as evasion.

How should pricing of the programme be structured?

Expect a regulated sector premium, and be suspicious when you do not see one. Senior financial services staff, counsel adjacent drafting discipline, and monitoring of regulator publications cost more than generalist capacity because the downside they prevent is priced in penalties and partnerships, not in embarrassment.

What do we hand over in selection?

Your licensing map, your audit and certification status, your complaint themes, your partner sensitivity list, and your current claims register if one exists. An agency that does not ask about complaints is planning to learn about them from journalists.

XI. Methodus

How this guide was built, and its limits

Trust figures are from the Edelman Trust Barometer 2025 financial services sector findings, including the subsector series in which banking leads and digital payments and digital assets trail. The disclosure example is the Securities and Exchange Commission 2024 enforcement action involving DraftKings and its outside public relations firm, as reported in the financial services trade coverage cited below. Regulatory roles reflect the published remits of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Limits are real. Trust percentages are survey measures that move with market events and question order. Enforcement examples are illustrative, not a census of agency failures. Nothing here is legal advice; disclosure decisions belong with your counsel, and any agency that blurs that boundary in selection should be scored down for it.

XII. Incipe

Where to start

Frontier Industries works with financial technology companies whose partners, regulators, and customers all read the same press release with different fears, and builds communications controls that hold across all three readings. If you want a claims audit of your live site conducted the way a risk committee would read it, start the conversation or call 401-219-4207. Bring the claim your compliance lead likes least. It is where the audit should begin.

Sources

1. Edelman, 2025 Trust Barometer, Financial Services Sector Insights. https://www.edelmansmithfield.com/trust/2025/trust-barometer/report-financial-sector 2. Edelman Smithfield, 2026 Trust Barometer, Financial Services Key Insights. https://www.edelmansmithfield.com/2026-Edelman-Trust-Barometer-Key-Insights-for-Financial-Services 3. 5WPR, Financial Services PR: Regulation, Trust, and Leadership (DraftKings disclosure case). https://www.5wpr.com/new/financial-services-pr-regulation-trust/ 4. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, rules and policy. https://www.consumerfinance.gov/rules-policy/ 5. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. https://www.occ.gov/ 6. PCI Security Standards Council. https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/ 7. US Securities and Exchange Commission, Cybersecurity Disclosure Rules, 2023. https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2023-139 8. G2, Buyer Behavior Report 2024. https://research.g2.com/hubfs/2024-buyer-behavior-report.pdf 9. McKinsey and Company, Global Payments and financial services insights. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/financial-services/our-insights 10. Gartner, Worldwide IT Spending Forecast, January 2025. https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2025-01-21-gartner-forecasts-worldwide-it-spending-to-grow-9-point-8-percent-in-2025