Actually, no news isn’t good news. But owing to the nature of the deals, it’s not unusual for a small or a start-up fintech to have just a few client signing announcements yearly. Those signings usually fall into three categories:

• The no comment: You may not mention the bank in any way, shape, or form. That is great; thank you so much for that one.
• The vanilla bean: You can prepare something, but the details are so vanilla and the quote so bland that it’s barely worth the effort.
• The never-never: You get the go-ahead on a Friday night, write it on a Saturday, get it signed off by your team on Sunday, and get it with the bank for approval first thing Monday morning. There, it will stay, stuck in the corporate food chain awaiting sign-off forever more, never to be seen again.

Five tips for getting a bank to sign off a press release

Over the years, working for a fintech start-up, then a fintech multi-national and then a fintech PR agency, these are the tactics I’ve seen work. It’s a bit of a team effort:

Incentivise your salespeople

To negotiate press as part of the contract. Cash bonuses for press releases and double again for a case study, seems to work well enough

Incentivise your bank

If they agree to do press, get dates by giving them a discount in the contract.

Stay close to your champion in the bank

Including during the sales process and the implementation. Work directly with them on the story, using them as the spokesperson, and ensure your story shows your champion as the pioneer they genuinely are.

Have the release written and ready to go

So that it can be slipped under the nose of your happy client the day everything goes live ahead of schedule and under budget.

Make the release hardworking and insightful

Tell the story of the partnership between your company and the bank. Do not dwell on what was wrong in the first place; be realistic. No bank will sign off a story saying, ‘Well, it was just chaos here till you guys showed up’.

Keep the quotes real and relevant

Not an unadulterated and shameless plug for your company. This will make it easier to get a sign-off and more credible with the journalists you ultimately depend on to publish it.

What if you hit a wall and can’t get the bank to talk?

Rather than issuing a no-name press release, which reeks of desperation, consider going down the analyst relations route. Here, your client can freely talk about the project and its successes to industry analysts under the comfort of NDA.