“There is a trust exchange with collecting people's data.”

Those were the words of Sinead Lanyon, Head of Marketing at Symphony, who spoke at Clear Path Analysis’s – the company that owns Insurance Investor and its sister site Fund Operator - “Driving Innovation In Institutional Investment Marketing” event in London this week.

The summit centred on discussions around how the marketing team's responsibilities have become more multi-layered due to changing client demands, advancements in technology, and increasing expectations and what to do to succeed.

Marketing functions are crucial to institutional investors in this age of fee compression and increased competition, so the panellists were keen to emphasise how much the industry needs to modernise and seek new channels to hit audiences.

“It's a collaborative relationship with sales. [We need to be] listening to what they need, not telling sales what they need.”

This is especially true due to generational and societal changes – such as millennials – or digital natives – becoming the biggest chunk of the workforce in the next few years – meaning that previously successful ideas will no longer work and that new ideas have to be taken into account.

Then the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) could also be hugely influential. The second panel focused on how it will change marketing from security and regulation to the actual job roles and duties of a marketer.

Sales is the driver, marketing is the engine

In the opening panel discussion, “Integrating digital marketing strategies with sales efforts to unlock growth”, Clear Path Analysis’s Head of Marketing, Jenna Williams, moderated a panel with Sinead Lanyon from Symphony, Gaurav Tandon, Head of Digital Marketing, Impax Asset Management, and Debbie Rivel, Senior Marketing Solutions Lead at SimCorp, to discuss issues affecting marketing teams across the sector.

The conversation concentrated on how marketing teams can work effectively within the wider context of the department at an institutional investment company particularly with the sales teams.

“People are bombarded with data and touchpoints. Yes, data is critical, so segment it and find out what your audience cares about.”

The key takeaway was that at times it felt as though the relationship with sales teams had become combative and that there needed to be an effort to remember the sales team was the driver of strategy and that marketing was the engine to do that.

“It's a collaborative relationship with sales,” said Rivel. “[We need to be] listening to what they need, not telling sales what they need.” This was key in the conversation – that all too often the marketing department’s ethos and goals became lost in a series of internal KPIs and creating their own strategies rather than looking at the bigger picture of how they could help the business secure more clients and bring in more revenue.

Lanyon also emphasised that too often marketing strategies became lost in corporate jargon and did not focus on the simple fact that it was “one person communicating to another”.

“People are bombarded with data and touchpoints,” she said. “Yes, data is critical, so segment it and find out what your audience cares about.” She added that it was important to be more natural and not over rely on cliched language. She recommended using humour, originality, and quirkiness to try and cut through the noise to counteract the deluge of content everyone receives.

She used changes in her own marketing strategies in recent years as an example to be more personable and human, which she said she was still unsure about but thought it necessary to try. “If it doesn’t work, then it doesn’t work. Yes, I may have used 10% of my annual marketing budget but I won’t know if it will [work] until I try.”

She added that she wanted to “get into the heads of her audience”, figure out what they want, and having time to care about as one of the goals for her strategies going forward.

However, all three speakers focused on the idea of trust as paramount. Namely, being trusted with people’s data. In today’s proliferation of logins and passwords, as well as endless scams and fraud, the panel emphasised how heavily data privacy and security weighed on everyone’s mind. Companies have to do better with realigning their internal operations, and by personalising their marketing, but largely the trust factor has to be respected.

“Data is a big thing,” said Tandon. “Collecting data and presenting it back to people [is our industry’s focus]. What do we do with that data - how do we build actions on it?” he added, were all the pressing matters in the industry and issues that the market focused on, but that the issue of trust was fundamental to this – both to getting that

AI – the future or a fad?

The second panel discussion of the day, moderated by Managing Editor Andrew Putwain and featured Fiona Sherwood, Chief Marketing Officer, Dasseti, Vincent Forestier, Global Head Of Retail, Wholesale and Institutional Segments Marketing, AXA Investment Management, and Krista Goodman, Head of Channel Marketing, Impax Asset Management.

The panel, entitled, “What impact will AI have for the future of marketing teams in the Investment Management space?”, followed the ideas of AI in a marketing context – what will the parameters be around it - and are our definitions too narrow?

“Collecting data and presenting it back to people [is our industry’s focus]. What do we do with that data - how do we build actions on it?”

For this forward-looking discussion, the panellists focused on ideas of how roles and the sector will change. Sherwood said she had concerns about using AI tools in isolation to help with the specifics of her job but that AI integration into the existing tech stack isn’t there yet so how this can be balanced will be an ongoing question for the next few years.

Forestier, who works at the largest company of the three panellists said it was laborious but progressing to leveraging it at a big risk averse company – i.e. that the main challenges were getting ideas through compliance and regulatory concerns, but that ideas around improved productivity were the driver instead of what it meant as added value for the business.

Goodman said her company was still in the early part of adoption of AI – they were putting together a map to introduce it more fully in the future with a steering committee. She said they had no intention of being an industry leader in the sector but would slowly, but surely, chip away at the implementation as they were keen to be more safe than sorry – once again she touched on the trust aspect that had been mentioned throughout the day – this time meaning the safety of their clients’ data as well as her company’s internal needs.

This was an attitude that many shared in the audience and received positive reinforcement from the audience – several panellists and audience members mentioned the incoming EU AI Act that won’t be enforced until the middle of 2026 as one of the events on the horizon that was underpinning much of the speed at which they were introducing AI.

This was because, as Goodman specified, it could be a case of spending time and money on processes that were rendered non-compliant by incoming legislation and regulations.

None of the questions were easy to answer but both panels were keen to continue searching for innovation and new best practice to keep the industry moving with the times.