InMarketing Today

The Bank of England has launched its first-ever stress test of private markets, asking 46 firms — including Goldman Sachs, Barclays, Blackstone, KKR, Carlyle and Oaktree — to model a deliberately severe five-year downturn: interest rates and inflation at 7%, the UK's deepest recession since 2008, and a 35% stock market fall. Michael Moore of UK Private Capital called the scenario “very severe.”

Jiri Krol of the Alternative Investment Management Association welcomed the exercise, arguing it should replace “generalised, anxiety-inducing speculation” about the opacity of private markets with evidence. That's a communications insight as much as a regulatory one: an industry under suspicion can't out-argue its critics, only out-disclose them.

Wherever your sector faces “too opaque” accusations, a rigorous, published methodology will do more for your reputation than any statement defending it. Treat this as a template, not a one-off.

Speaking at Deutsche Bank's “Bank on Tech” event in Bengaluru, chief information officer Denis Roux said AI is cutting technology project timelines sharply: work that once took two years is “now getting done in three to six months.” Backlogs that took months are clearing in weeks.

Roux stopped short of putting a number on the productivity gain, saying only “we know the productivity is there” — even though a precise figure would make a better headline. For a brand built on trust, an unquantified claim that's true beats a precise one that can't survive scrutiny.

Before you claim an AI win publicly, decide what you can actually prove with a number and what you can only describe directionally — then say the directional part directionally. Resist the urge to round up.

A new eClerx survey of 366 US marketing leaders finds 78% say their martech stacks don't support business goals — even though most have already bought the tools. Only 25% describe their organisation as fully data-driven; 75% are making decisions on partial data. Just 24% use media mix modelling to reallocate budget against live performance.

The story underneath the story is a branding one: marketing teams have spent a decade buying capability and almost no time building the operating model to use it. A stack producing insight nobody acts on isn't a technology failure — it's a leadership and process problem dressed up as a software one.

Audit last quarter's martech spend against one question: how many insights actually changed a decision? If the answer is “few,” the fix is workflow and accountability, not another platform.