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We asked UK consumers across four generations to rank what they wanted from a financial brand. Every generation put 'best interests at heart' first. That tells us very little about what separates them.
Second place is where things started to get interesting – and where the generations started to diverge.
Gen Z respondents picked ‘we help our customers reach their immediate goals’. Millennials picked ‘we turn our customers’ dreams into reality’. Gen X and Boomers landed on the same answer: ‘we do what we say we will’. Same wording across the older two generations but very different expectations underneath.
Yet many financial brands are still running a single brand message across audiences that want very different things from it.
The Gen Z drift
For the past five years or so, the financial services marketing playbook has been fairly straight-forward: build brands around younger customers, take cues from the neobanks, and make banking feel friendlier and more goal-oriented.
The argument is reasonable. Gen Z have decades of customer value ahead of them, face fewer barriers to switching, and are more willing to move between providers. So it makes sense to build the brand around them and establish relationships early. That works when younger customers are your core audience. The risk is assuming everyone else will follow.
What we keep hearing in client conversations suggests they often don’t.
Older customers aren’t objecting to the products. They’re objecting to the way the brands present themselves – gamified savings goals; aspirational messaging about the life you could be living; branding borrowed from fintechs aimed at twenty-five-year-olds. Most of it doesn’t land.
Yet, the older generations hold most of the assets in the market, most of the mortgages, the and the bulk of investment portfolios. Marketing aimed elsewhere isn’t just missed spend. It’s an open invitation for competitors to take a profitable customer base that still matters.
Trust now means different things to different people
Historically, trust in financial services was reasonably straightforward. The institution was around for a long time, looked serious, didn’t make headlines for the wrong reasons, and didn’t lose people’s money. That description still works for about half the customer base. For the other half, trust now operates differently.
On the attitudinal measures in the survey, younger customers start from a higher baseline of trust. They came of age with neobanks and are more likely to assume a financial institution knows what it’s doing. They are also significantly more willing than older generations to defer to financial expertise. Telling a Gen Z customer they can trust you may be wasted copy. They are more likely to assume competence unless given a reason not to.
Older customers start from a more cautious position. They want to see how the institution operates, who regulates it, what happens when something goes wrong, and whether the small print actually backs up the headline. With this group, you don’t get the benefit of the doubt by default. Trust isn’t built through reassurance but through proof.
One audience is already inclined to trust you. The other wants you to prove it.
Many financial brands are still trying to do both jobs with the same message. Our findings suggest that approach risks producing a worse outcome for both audiences than two clearly differentiated approaches would.
It’s worth saying that this is the attitudinal picture. How customers actually act on these attitudes when they’re in market is the next question for further research.
Where this leaves a financial services marketing team
The first is to question whether a single brand message is doing too much work. Our findings suggest that younger and older audiences often respond to different cues. Younger customers appear more receptive to outcome-led messaging focused on goals, progress and immediate benefits. Older customers place greater weight on evidence, consistency and proof points that demonstrate credibility and reliability.
That doesn’t necessarily mean creating different brands. It may mean expressing the same brand through different lenses for different audiences, rather than relying on a single message to resonate equally with everyone.
The second is to take Gen X more seriously as a distinct audience. In our study they reported the lowest levels of long-term financial confidence, yet they are often grouped alongside Millennials or Boomers in planning and communications. That creates a potential blind spot for brands looking to grow or retain valuable customer relationships.
The wider question
Over the last few years, much of the category has moved towards a more youthful, goal-oriented style of communication. There are good commercial reasons for doing so. Younger customers represent future growth, are more willing to switch providers, and are building financial relationships that could last decades.
But our findings suggest that not all generations interpret financial brand messaging in the same way, or look for the same signals when deciding who to trust.
The question for brands is not whether they should target Gen Z. It is whether, in doing so, they are still communicating effectively with other audiences that remain commercially important today.
For some organisations, the answer may be a deliberate decision to prioritise younger customers. For others, this research may prompt a reassessment of whether current messaging is striking the right balance across generations. Either way, it is a strategic choice worth making consciously rather than by default.
About the author
- Jane Passey
- Director, STRAT7 Jigsaw
Jane is a mixed methods research director at STRAT7 Jigsaw, where she partners with clients across industries and regions to bring their customers closer into view. From uncovering emerging trends to identifying whitespace and refining brand positioning, she helps organisations make confident, insight-led decisions. She’s especially passionate about combining methodologies to craft meaningful insights and tell powerful, engaging stories.