InMarketing Today

HSBC posted a pre-tax profit of $19.5bn (£14.5bn) for the first half of the year, up 23% on the same period in 2025 and ahead of the $18.9bn analysts had forecast, rounding off a strong reporting season that also lifted Lloyds, Barclays and NatWest. The results reignited calls from the Trades Union Congress to raise the surcharge on bank profits from 3% to 8%, a move it says could raise £9bn over four years. Group chief executive Georges Elhedery responded directly: "So the UK growth requires strong banks."

That line was not a throwaway remark; it was a reframe. A record profit invites one obvious question from politicians and unions — can you afford to pay more tax? — and HSBC answered a different one instead: can the country afford weaker banks? That is a communications choice as much as a financial one, and it is the same instinct any leader needs when good results arrive with a target on their back.

When your own numbers are strong enough to draw scrutiny, do not wait for critics to set the frame. State plainly what your results enable for other people — lending capacity, jobs, investment — before anyone else defines what they mean.

BlackRock is bringing tokenised access to its Institutional Cash Series money market funds — $311bn under management across 15 markets, including sterling, euro and US dollar share classes — using on-chain share classes minted on Ethereum via JP Morgan's Kinexys platform. The tokens allow 24/7 peer-to-peer transfer and near-real-time settlement, features the underlying funds have never offered. Beccy Milchem, BlackRock's global head of cash distribution, called it part of an effort to "modernise capital markets infrastructure."

Notice the vocabulary. "Modernise." Not "disrupt," not "revolutionise" — measured words, chosen for an audience that associates blockchain with volatility and risk, not stability. For a product built on capital preservation, that restraint is the marketing strategy: same fund, same risk profile, different rails. The language is doing as much work as the technology.

When you introduce genuinely new infrastructure to a risk-averse audience, describe what stays the same before what changes. Continuity earns trust faster than novelty does, and it should come first in every line of copy you write about it.

Claire Cherrington, director at PMS and Bankhall, writes that younger homebuyers increasingly research mortgages through TikTok "finfluencers," online communities and AI tools before ever speaking to a broker — arriving with strong opinions already formed, and sometimes with misinformation baked in.

The value of professional advice has not shrunk. What has moved is where it needs to start. Advisers are no longer the first source of information; they are increasingly the ones correcting it, which is a harder, less flattering role to sell than being first with the facts. Most marketing content in the sector is still built for the old job.

Build content that names and corrects the specific myths circulating in your market, rather than content that only explains your own product. Being the source that debunks bad advice earns more trust than being the source that repeats good advice everyone has already seen.