I’m a wordsmith but somehow, I fell into finance and economics copywriting. One of my nearest and dearest clients is Savvy, one of Australia’s leading finance brokers. It’s been great to learn finance from experts such as the CEO Bill Tsouvalas, and gain insights into PR and SEO from Satwik and Adrian over the last decade.

With all that in mind, I’ve also learned how to leverage copywriting to enhance a finance business. I’ve written for many different finance businesses: brokers, lenders, financial advisers, debt negotiators, financial educators, investment firms, and companies working in financial technology (fintech.)

So how does professional copywriting boost your finance business?

Copywriting establishes credibility

Finance is complicated. Extremely complicated. For instance, all types of consumer (not business!) lending is overseen by ASIC under the National Consumer Credit Protection Act. Finance is a bit of a taboo subject in the West - people don’t readily tell you how much they make; nor will they volunteer whether that shiny new Beemer is under finance, either. People want to feel reassured that the people that will handle their money will treat it with kid gloves - and do right by them. Not just because they have to, because that’s part of their mission and core business principles. Professional copywriters can craft that narrative, so it’s baked into all financial communications.

Copywriters are “financial interpreters”

Full disclosure: I haven’t touched a mathematics textbook since I was in Year 11. Finance is all about numbers - and some of the trickier calculations can often go over my head. However, interpreting dense and often confusing concepts such as chattel mortgages so laypeople can understand it is half the marketing battle. Technical explanations of chattel mortgages can often throw people for a loop; but explaining products or loans in simple terms make them easier to sell. A chattel mortgage is a loan for business to buy equipment or vehicles that gives them tax advantages and allows them to borrow more than the value of the item being purchased. A few of you reading may be thinking, “That’s just what I need!” See? Simple.

Copywriters help with financial education

There is no advantage to “tricking” people into your financial product. ASIC will eventually find out and you’ll lose your credit licence. Simple as that.

Financial education in Australia is lacking to say the least. A Savvy survey in 2020 showed that about 35% of Australian adults have a “fair” grasp on financial literacy which corresponds to a primary school equivalent of knowledge. For a society that runs on finance, that’s pretty woeful.

An educated audience is an empowered audience and an empowered audience makes better financial decisions. Copywriting can be tailored to introducing new technology in finance (fintech) and helping people help themselves when it comes to finance and economics. This all feeds into trust and credibility for your financial business.

Copywriters Broaden Your Niche Content

As someone working in finance, you may think there’s only so much you can write about. A copywriter can broaden your appeal by writing for several different niches at the same time. Just writing about highly abstract “car loans” can be drilled down into:

How to save money on car loans for single mums on a budget
Bad credit car loans
How to get a great deal on car loans as a pensioner
What scams to avoid when applying for car loans
How your business can save money on car loans
What is the difference between a car loan and an unsecured personal loan?

Those are all free ideas (that I’ve already written about - sorry!) which your financial business can leverage to expand on your content base and improve your SEO for niche keywords. Professional copywriters are also lean, mean ideas machines - use them! They also make for great newsletters, social posts, and blogs.

With an expanded content library you cement your thought leadership - and trust in your brand. Which can go a long way into developing an ongoing audience; you’ll never know when the family you got a car loan inquiry for may turn to you for their mortgage broking!

Copywriters Save Time (and Money)

Writing out everything yourself can be exhausting if you aren’t a writer. If you’re doing the writing and marketing as well as all the broking or advising, it can be a struggle. Copywriters are much more efficient at writing and researching than doing it all yourself. Just like outsourcing your plumbing to a plumber, outsourcing your writing to a writer makes financial sense. For a modest investment, you’ll make a good ROI over months and years with good content.

Using high conversion content for transactional emails are even better investments; and there are so many points of losing a prospect in a financial sales funnel, too. Qualifying leads, supplying estimates, getting documents submitted, consenting to credit checks, conditional approval, unconditional approval, settlement, post-settlement follow-up - that’s almost 2,000 words of copy if you wanted to send nurture emails to your prospect at each step. For someone like me, it’s a breeze. But that figure may send some finance people dizzy - and rightly so!

If you want to get the best financial copywriting in Melbourne, contact me! I’m always happy to get stuck into financial copywriting and help take your business to new heights.

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I've been copywriting for one of my dearest clients, Savvy Finance, for over a year and a half. Like every business reliant on technology, I back up. Everything. Once to the cloud and again on an external hard drive. Looking all the content I've written for Savvy, I've chalked up 330 articles at the time of writing. Without giving too much away, that's 138,600 words. That's over ten times as long as my master's thesis. The U.S. National Novel Writing Month sets a 50,000 word benchmark - and that's an entire novel. In essence, I've written 2 and a bit books' worth for that great company, and I'm happy to have done it.

So why can't we all write that book? Or at least, something of equal or greater length. It seems that I've already written a few "books" since I started my business all those months ago. Speaking from my own perspective...well, it's all about perspective.

Writing isn't a "supertask" but it can sure feel like it

Writing a book or a long-form piece can feel like a task that will take the better part of your life to complete. It's a supertask - a task which takes infinite time to complete. Sort of like writing down the history of your life in pinpoint detail. It can't be done.

Writing a book can, especially if you break it down into chunks. Or, don't even think about it like a book. A book I'm currently reading, Empire of the Sun by J.G. Ballard. It's based on his boyhood, growing up amid World War II in Shanghai. Delving deeper, it reads like a series of vignettes tied together by a common theme. Unconventional, but it works. It won him the James Tait Memorial Prize and a Man Booker Prize shortlisting for his efforts, too.

In your mind, talking is a form of action

Have you ever caught yourself thinking about sending a reply text to someone only to realise you haven't actually done it? Talking about doing things is a form of action in and of itself, although it produces nothing of value. Even subvocalising is a form of "action" for some people. A little less conversation and more action. In fact, this blog post is a product of that - I didn't just think about writing this blog post - I actually did it!

Writing long pieces is what other people do

What's the difference between you and a novel writer? The novel writer was once in your position, now they're published.

Writing isn't it's own reward

If you're writing for the celebrity and the riches, don't. Writing creatively is one of my "rewards" for a day's job well done. It's up there with exercising, cooking a tasty meal and hanging out with friends. Writing should be its own reward. Doing it for others seldom yields good results.

What is your experience with these sorts of writing tasks?