Leadership Blog

Product Education: Building Trust, Informing Policy

May 29, 2025

In today’s fast-paced fintech landscape, the lines between departments are blurring – and for good reason. Our extensive experience in Marketing and Compliance has shown us the incredible power of genuine cross-functional collaboration, particularly when communicating about our product to diverse audiences, like customers, partners, vendors, and legislators. It’s no longer sufficient to simply market a product or ensure its compliance; we must actively educate. This approach is a strategic imperative that empowers our customers and drives fair, effective policymaking that benefits all.

Building Trust and Adoption

Fintech customers demand more than just a financing product; they need solutions that deliver transparency and clarity. Understanding how a product functions and its direct benefits is essential for them. We take ownership of proactively providing this insight. Effective product education is key here – by sharing straightforward educational content about our financial offerings, we build customer confidence, minimize friction, and foster strong loyalty.

A detailed funding call that breaks down terms, comprehensive self-serve resources, and readily available contact information all contribute to a customer feeling informed, secure, and supported. Our onboarding materials aren’t just instructions; they’re foundational guides. When customers understand our product, we see improved engagement, better performance, higher retention, and greater overall satisfaction. Simply put: more educated customers tend to be more successful business owners and ultimately more loyal customers – and that’s a win, win.

Driving Effective Policy

From a legal and policy standpoint, the value of simple, jargon-free, factual materials is tremendous. Legislators need a clear, accurate understanding of our product to create regulation that is both fair and effective. Policymakers often attempt to classify products into existing categories, so it’s critical that we articulate the nuanced differences between similar yet distinct offerings.

Consider the innovation in fintech over the past decade alone, particularly products like ours that allow businesses to pay according to their revenues. This concept often excites and impresses policymakers, because the benefits are immediately clear. However, the tendency of attempting to apply laws passed decades ago to these modern financial products often is like putting a square peg in a round hole. Those foundational laws were simply not designed for the kind of flexible, responsive financial solutions that exist today. Clear, proactive education helps bridge this gap, ensuring that new legislation is well-informed and doesn’t inadvertently stifle beneficial innovation for the many underserved by traditional financing. By clarifying these distinctions, we contribute to a regulatory environment that supports progress.

Final Thoughts

Whether we’re earning customer loyalty or helping to inform legislation, education is fundamental to building long-term trust and fostering sustainable growth. To achieve this, we need to:

  • Make education an ongoing strategic priority: This isn’t a one-off campaign; it’s a continuous commitment that evolves with changing customer needs and industry regulation.
  • Align compliance with creativity: Our internal teams must collaborate closely, ensuring that marketing communications are easy to understand while also being fully compliant.
  • Stay close in a fast-evolving industry: The fintech landscape is constantly changing. Marketing and Legal teams should partner early and often, both internally and externally, to ensure educational efforts remain relevant and impactful.

 


About the Author


Jessica Roden

Vice President of Marketing at Forward Financing

With deep marketing leadership experience across B2B and B2C industries, from telecommunication to financial services, Jessica oversees all of Forward’s communications efforts. She’s especially passionate about building strong brands and developing strategies that foster awareness, understanding, and trust.