When Plaid published its annual “Fintech Effect” report, it did not include a single mention of Plaid’s product. The report surveyed thousands of consumers about their digital finance habits, analysed adoption trends across demographics, and presented findings that any fintech company, journalist, or investor could use. The report was downloaded over 100,000 times and cited in hundreds of articles. Plaid gained more brand visibility from giving away research than from any product marketing campaign. According to DemandSage, content marketing produces over three times more leads than outbound marketing at 62% lower cost. For fintech companies, publishing industry insights is the highest-leverage form of content marketing available.
Market Sizing and Forecast Data
The most cited type of industry insight is market sizing. When a fintech company publishes a well-sourced analysis of a market’s current size, growth rate, and projected trajectory, it creates a reference point that journalists, analysts, and competitors cite for months or years.
The value comes from the scarcity of good market data. Research firms like Gartner, Forrester, and Grand View Research sell market reports for thousands of dollars. Most people cannot access them. A fintech company that synthesises publicly available data points into a coherent market overview fills a gap. The analysis becomes the free alternative to expensive research, and the company becomes associated with expertise in that market.
The Boston Consulting Group projects fintech revenues will reach $1.5 trillion by 2030, with embedded finance and digital lending accounting for the largest share of projected growth.
According to CB Insights’ 2024 fintech report, global fintech funding declined 40 percent between 2022 and 2024, pushing the sector toward consolidation and a sharper focus on profitability over growth at all costs.
Stripe’s annual “State of the Internet Economy” report follows this pattern. It combines Stripe’s proprietary transaction data with public economic indicators to create a picture of online commerce that no other company can produce. The report does not say “use Stripe.” It says “here is what is happening in the internet economy.” The implicit message is that Stripe understands this economy better than anyone else, which is exactly the credibility signal that enterprise customers respond to.
Fintech companies that publish market research position themselves as authorities in markets they want to dominate. The research does the positioning work that traditional marketing cannot.
Regulatory Analysis
Fintech regulation changes constantly. PSD2 in Europe. Open Banking in the UK. State money transmitter licences in the US. MiCA for crypto assets. Each regulatory change creates winners and losers among fintech companies, and every fintech executive needs to understand the implications.
A fintech company that publishes clear, timely analysis of regulatory changes provides immediate value to its audience. When the EU’s Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) took effect in January 2025, fintech companies that published practical guides to compliance attracted significant readership from financial institutions scrambling to understand their obligations.
Regulatory analysis works as an industry insight because the content is genuinely useful. A compliance officer at a mid-sized bank reading a fintech company’s DORA compliance guide is getting practical help with a real problem. The fact that the guide was written by a company that sells compliance technology is a positive signal, not a negative one. It suggests the company understands the problem it claims to solve.
According to CMI’s 2025 B2B research, 46% of B2B marketers expect their content budgets to increase in 2025. Companies allocating that budget to regulatory analysis rather than product marketing generate more qualified leads from institutional buyers. Strong digital PR strategies often start with regulatory analysis because the content is timely, useful, and highly shareable among professional audiences.
Benchmarking Data
Fintech executives constantly ask: “How do we compare?” What is the average customer acquisition cost for a B2B payment company? What conversion rate should an onboarding flow achieve? How long does the typical enterprise fintech sales cycle last? What churn rate is acceptable for a lending platform?
Benchmarking data answers these questions, and fintech companies that publish it attract exactly the audience they want to sell to. A payment company that publishes average interchange rates by merchant category gives every payment professional a reference document they will bookmark. A lending platform that publishes default rate benchmarks by loan type gives every credit risk officer a comparison point.
The publishing company gains two advantages. First, it attracts decision-makers who are actively thinking about the metrics its product affects. A compliance officer downloading a compliance cost benchmark is a warm lead for a compliance technology company. Second, it establishes the company’s metrics as the industry reference point. When people use your benchmarks, they implicitly accept your framing of what matters and how it should be measured.
Fintech founders who build authority often do so by publishing the benchmarks that their entire industry uses to evaluate performance.
Failure Post-Mortems and Lessons Learned
The rarest and most valuable type of industry insight is the honest failure analysis. When a fintech company publishes what went wrong with a product launch, a market entry, or a strategic decision, it provides something that self-promotional content never can: genuine learning.
Buffer, the social media management company, published its revenue, salaries, and pricing mistakes publicly for years. The transparency attracted attention and trust disproportionate to the company’s size. In fintech, where companies are understandably cautious about disclosing vulnerabilities, the few that share honest post-mortems stand out dramatically.
The value is counterintuitive. Admitting a mistake signals confidence. A company that can explain what went wrong and what it learned demonstrates the analytical capability and intellectual honesty that institutional buyers value. A company that only publishes success stories signals either that it has never made a mistake (unlikely) or that it is not honest about its experience (concerning).
Building credibility through publications is most effective when the content includes genuine analysis of challenges, not just celebrations of achievements.
Distribution Strategy for Industry Insights
Publishing the insight is half the work. Distributing it effectively is the other half.
The most effective distribution combines owned channels (company blog, email newsletter, LinkedIn company page), earned channels (pitched to journalists who cover the topic, shared with industry analysts), and amplified channels (LinkedIn posts from the CEO and leadership team, discussed in podcast interviews and conference presentations).
Timing matters. Market sizing reports are most valuable at the start of a fiscal year when companies set budgets and strategies. Regulatory analysis is most valuable immediately before or after a regulatory change takes effect. Benchmarking data is most valuable during planning cycles. Aligning publication timing with the audience’s decision-making calendar maximises impact.
Media coverage in fintech often originates from well-timed industry insights that give journalists data points for stories they are already planning to write.
The fintech companies that gain the most from publishing industry insights are the ones that treat the practice as a core business function rather than a marketing experiment. They invest in original research, they publish with regularity, and they measure the results against pipeline metrics rather than vanity metrics. The insight is the product. The leads, the credibility, and the brand authority are the returns.
