In the beginning, there were communities
If you stay in a sector long enough, you become finely tuned to the changes happening around you.
Fintech in the UK has taken on many guises over the past 15 years, and you could say Romney was there at the very beginning.
Before most fintechs were household names, he was working in-house for one of the first breakout players in the space: the (in)famous short-term credit provider, Wonga.
Controversy aside, it was here that Romney first caught the fintech marketing bug.
That spark led him to head up marketing at modern mortgage provider Habito, before founding his own savings app, Communion, and later joining wealthtech Sidekick.
“Fintech marketing has evolved hugely in the time that I've been involved as a marketer”
Back in the early 2010s, fintechs were gaining traction through community, with a scrappy, challenger mindset that defined the era.
Wise (then TransferWise) was one of the first to rise out of the primordial tech ooze, followed closely by Monzo, who pioneered what became the fintech community playbook: building a business around belonging.
Monzo quite literally built a bank in public.
Alongside hackathons, their in-person “golden ticket” events – where users could come to the office to collect their coral cards, fostered a deep sense of connection with the brand.
Early fans even helped co-create features like budgeting tools, card freezing, and bill splitting.
“Monzo's community playbook was really strong in that it was a bank built for developers, spread within the developer community who were really excited about being part of something”
Scarcity breeds creativity, and in this case, that early startup marketing mindset created a playbook still being deployed by fintechs today.
Measure twice, market once
With customer numbers came revenue, which in turn fuelled marketing budgets.
When there’s finally money to spend, it’s natural to turn to the channels you can measure most closely.
It was that mindset that led to the explosion of PPC and paid media in the late 2010s.
All very good whilst it works, but as Romney discovered whilst at Habito, you quickly reach a saturation point where those channels stop delivering.
“You start to see diminishing returns and actually need to diversify your channels quite quickly.”
Andrew Chen observed as much way back in 2010 (see The Law of Shitty Clickthroughs) and the point is still just as relevant today.
At Habito, they could never hope to compete with all the big banks who were spending far more than them bidding on all the relevant mortgage keywords.
So what was the answer?
It was time to look beyond performance and turn towards brand marketing; to create demand, not just capture it.
As Romney puts it, they needed to “drive awareness of Habito as something different to what people knew and expected from trying to get a mortgage in the UK.”
Differentiation was going to be key to growth.
How great brands earn attention
Such thinking kickstarted the development of a completely unique visual identity.
Working with Uncommon, Habito built out a brand around an arresting style they referred to as ‘phantasmagoric’ - in other words, dreamlike, surreal, otherworldly.
The idea was to move away from the typical language and imagery dominating the mortgage space at the time.
The young couple surrounded by boxes, moving into their new home - ‘start your future today!’
When they zig, you zag.
Instead, Habito wanted to foreground what was broken about the industry, and lean into the pain points that so many people experience when trying to get a mortgage.
So much jargon to understand that your head explodes? Left on hold so long that you get eaten by piranhas?
These hyperbolic images were ultimately about speaking to the market’s emotional experience.
“The advertising campaign focused more on the feeling that most people have when they go through the mortgage process”
By moving away from the functional benefits, and appealing more to the customer’s emotions, Habito were carving out a space unique to them.
Brand work, as Byron Sharp defines it, is about creating ‘mental availability’, being easily recalled in buying moments.
Emotion and distinctive visuals achieve that far more effectively than rational argument ever could.
Capturing emotion with video
At Kuda, Romney is once again turning to brand, this time to help the neobank recapture market share it once dominated after launching in 2019.
A big part of that effort has been drilling down into the ICP: redefining and reconnecting with the audience to understand what they really need. Before you can reposition or launch new products, you have to start there.
So how did video play a role in that process?
For Romney, it began with a series of in-depth qualitative interviews. Initially, the findings were presented as text on slides: useful, but flat.
Then he watched the original clips, and the experience changed completely:
“It's crazy just how much more powerful it was when you hear it from someone who's experiencing that thing or is talking about it in their own words.”
Video became a way to feel the research rather than just read it, a tool for communicating emotion more effectively than any document or data point.
And the same principle applies externally. Whether it’s a customer testimonial, a product story, or a case study, video’s power comes from hearing real people share experiences that feel familiar.
“Video is hugely powerful. As a vehicle for telling stories, you can't beat it.”
In a world of metrics and dashboards, that human connection is what turns insights into understanding, and understanding into trust.
Fintech marketing: an emotional future?
What role does emotion have to play in a world increasingly populated by AI-generated content?
For Romney, the marketer’s skill set will still come down to two things: discernment and understanding your customer inside out.
Tools will change. Algorithms will evolve. But the ability to see people clearly, to translate real human needs into stories that connect, will always be the differentiator.
He references Tom Wentworth, CMO of incident.io, who believes marketers of the future will only need two skills: AI and taste. Crucially, taste is an exponential multiplier, a human instinct that can’t be automated.
Here’s where the story of fintech marketing comes full circle - maybe that’s where fintech marketing is heading again.
Back to something more human. Less about the data and more about the meaning.
The same impulse that built early communities and later gave rise to distinctive brands: the drive to connect emotionally, not just transactionally.
