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April 18, 2024
April 18, 2024
With the meteoric rise of fintechs, the financial advisory landscape has become exceptionally competitive. Differentiation is instrumental to securing long-term success, and this is where the advice and counsel of a company’s communications leaders becomes so valuable. Occupying that role at Betterment is Chief Communications Officer (CCO) Raoul Bhavnani.
Founded in 2008 and launched in 2010, Betterment took the financial world by storm by combining advisory services with automated technology for digital investment and cash management. The fintech, which Raoul joined in October 2021, now manages nearly $31 billion in assets.
His prior professional background ranges from financial services, technology and politics, to startups, communications, research, and consulting. Raoul’s career path includes more than 16 years as senior managing director at business advisory firm FTI Consulting, working as a financial analyst for Morgan Stanley, and even political campaign work in Newark, N.J.
We recently caught up with Raoul to discuss the influence of strategic communications across the fintech and financial services industries as well as the evolving media landscape and his philosophy as a CCO. What follows is an edited version of our discussion:
How do you expect financial marketing communications to evolve through the current cycle and beyond?
This has been a tough, tricky, volatile and complex year to be in financial services. From the Betterment perspective, we're thrilled that we're continuing to grow and attract more customers. I think that MarComs today is best characterized by a focus on clarity, consistency and authenticity.
As more attention is paid to a company’s communications, what we’re all learning is to stay away from corporate speak and speak directly. You’ve got to be authentic and honest. If something’s coming up that will somehow change the current dynamic, you have to communicate that information to your customer base clearly and accurately, and give them an opportunity to interact directly with your company. Figure out what this change means for your customers and, in that way, you build trust.
Given an increasing focus on transparency, what do you think are the primary differences between internal versus external communications?
When you’re delivering internal communications to employees across the company or within large groups like departments, that’s effectively issuing a press release. Companies sometimes miss the fact that they talk in a shorthand way to their employees that may or may not make sense to external audiences. In my opinion, that approach doesn’t work. You have got to think about these types of internal communications as being fit-for-purpose to go out into the world, even if they’re not designed that way. You have to assume that the information is flowing outside of your organization.
The alignment between the communications you’re making internally and externally has to be absolutely rock-solid with virtually no daylight between the two. Frankly, some companies do miss that they’re speaking in one voice on the inside and in another voice on the outside. There are too many different groups of people looking at your communications to have discrepancies between the different types.
Not every company has a chief communications officer. Why do you think it’s an important role? And where does the CCO best fit within the C-suite and across different parts of the business?
In almost every organization, whether or not there’s a CCO, I think there is a broad understanding and agreement that communication is absolutely central to success. Even if a company has not appointed a CCO per se, it doesn’t mean that they don’t take communication seriously. And for those companies that have appointed a CCO, particularly those where that role reports directly to the CEO, it’s become a reflection of how vital communication is to the health of the business. It’s incredibly important for that CCO to be in the room with the CEO and others when they are making business decisions and bring both unique counsel and a different perspective.
<split-lines>"In almost every organization, whether or not there’s a CCO, I think there is a broad understanding and agreement that communication is absolutely central to success."<split-lines>
What do you see peers in the space often missing when it comes to their communications strategy?
We need to come together as an industry and find ways to share best practices because no one has cornered the market, whether that’s individuals or companies themselves. We can all learn from one another, and the more opportunities we have to gather, the better we all become.
I also think companies often fail to understand how reputation is actually built, how it’s protected, and how it can be damaged without a communicator in the room. It’s very beneficial to have communicators who can think about various stakeholders—that means folks who aren’t just interested in media, but also perhaps in public policy, the community, the customer, and so forth. Some companies tend to miss these considerations.
<split-lines>"I think companies often fail to understand how reputation is actually built, how it’s protected, and how it can be damaged without a communicator in the room."<split-lines>
The media landscape has changed dramatically throughout your time in communications. How has your approach changed with it? What advice do you have for other communications leaders?
I’ve certainly seen a lot of change over the past 20 years, particularly generational change. The number-one piece of advice that I would offer any of my peers is that you must be learning all the time. This is not a fixed landscape. Just because you grew up writing press releases, that doesn’t mean that tool will remain the best way to provide information to the public. You must be completely up on, and steeped in, new tools and channels, and be willing to experiment and take a risk.
More importantly, you have to be willing to fail. And you have to learn about the ways in which constituencies learn about and interact with the company. What’s happening on Reddit, Twitter and TikTok helps set the scene for us as a brand, as does traditional media. As a communicator—especially in the world of consumer finance—you absolutely have to be up to speed on the wide range of channels that influence the ultimate buyer of your product and services.
<split-lines>"The number-one piece of advice that I would offer any of my peers is that you must be learning all the time. This is not a fixed landscape."<split-lines>
How do you approach maintaining resilience and edge when it comes to your communications strategy?
It helps a little bit to be the ‘new guy.’ I think I’m able to bring an energy and a perspective to the role that enlivens it a bit, or gives it new dimensions and perspectives. Every day is a new day and requires resilience.
Betterment has been around for some time and we’re more mature than many fintech startups, but we’re still a very young company, almost a baby, at least compared to our wealth management peers who have been operating for 60 to 90 years.
There are many chapters still to be written for Betterment, so you have to bring a sense of wonder to the job, and be ready for what’s coming around the corner. You’re using playbooks and relationships that you’ve built, but you’re also charting a new course. This work brings me energy and the ability to come up with fresh ideas and new ways of thinking as we move forward.
