The Liminal view

While the past decade was hardly short of disruption, financial communicators often had clearer strategic narratives to work with. Central banks offered relatively predictable guidance, ESG quickly became a dominant theme, and globalisation provided a familiar framework for discussing growth, risk and opportunity. Much of the communicator’s role was translating those broad narratives into language that different audiences could understand.

That era is over. And if you are entering financial services now, you may not realise quite how different the environment you are stepping into is from the one your senior colleagues were trained in.

Consider the current moment.  Inflation, geopolitical uncertainty, regulatory change and rapid technological advances are all shaping the agenda simultaneously. For communicators, the challenge is no longer translating a single dominant narrative but helping organisations explain how they are responding to multiple, often competing, forces at once.

For a generation that grew up with social media, fragmented media landscapes and the collapse of institutional authority, this should feel familiar. The instinct to present a single, unified message to all audiences at all times is not just increasingly difficult; it is increasingly unconvincing. Sophisticated stakeholders, whether institutional investors, regulators or informed retail clients, are not looking for false clarity. They are looking for honest, well-reasoned perspectives that acknowledge complexity without being paralysed by it. That doesn’t mean consistency no longer matters. It means consistency now comes from a clear purpose and set of values, rather than repeating exactly the same message to every audience.

This is where younger professionals have a genuine edge, even if they do not always recognise it. The assumption that there is one correct view, handed down from the top and communicated consistently downward, belongs to an older communications model. The more durable skill is knowing how to hold multiple narratives simultaneously: speaking to an investor audience about uncertainty in interest rates, a regulatory audience about governance and resilience, and a media audience about strategic direction, without those messages contradicting one another or collapsing into mush. An asset manager, for example, may need to reassure investors about long-term performance, demonstrate robust governance to regulators and explain strategic change to journalists, all within the same week.

That requires something more than messaging discipline. It requires a genuine understanding of the business, the sector and the stakeholder. It requires intellectual confidence, the ability to say “we do not yet know” without undermining credibility. And it requires the kind of editorial judgement that no template or talking point can substitute for.

The communicators who will define the next decade of financial services are not those who wait for consensus to emerge before they speak. They are those who can build coherent, credible narratives in the absence of it and remain credible even when answers are not yet clear. That is a harder job than it sounds. It is also, for those willing to develop the craft, a more interesting one.