Ready to hit the stage?

Attendees want sessions that have been specifically tailored to address the priorities and unique challenges facing retail banking providers.

• Growth strategies
• How to increase deposits and loans
• Checking account acquisition strategies
• How to grow relationships and increase depth of wallet
• Digital banking trends
• Digital banking products
• Advanced digital marketing strategies
• Advanced CX strategies and UX trends
• Innovative open banking and fintech integrations
• Advanced AI and generative AI strategies
• Predictive analytics and machine learning applications
• Streamlining and accelerating the new account opening process
• Onboarding and cross-selling strategies
• The latest trends and innovations in payments
• Innovative retail delivery models
• Martech stacks and strategies for institutions with > $20 billion in assets
• Marketing segmentation, personalization, and automation strategies
• Demographic targeting and marketing strategies
• Leveraging financial health, wellness, and education strategies to fuel growth

Attendees at don’t want just “great speakers” who are “interesting.” They want great teachers. They want people to show them “how to” instead of explain “why you should.”

Attendees enjoy hearing about what the future holds, but they really value learning what they can do now — today — ideas and insights that will help them do their jobs faster, more effectively, more efficiently and with greater impact/ROI.

They want advanced material — sophisticated strategies and best practices. No one has ever complained that the material presented in was “too advanced.”

To be considered for a speaking slot, please provide the following:

• The name, title/position and company of the speaker who will be presenting
• The proposed title of the session along with a narrative description at least 500 words long
• At least 8-10 bullet points summarizing what you will teach attendees (we prefer outcome-oriented, growth-focused, how-to sessions)
• A sample PowerPoint presentation so we can see what kind of slides you create
• Video of the speaker presenting a session (not mandatory, but definitely helpful)

The Financial Brand Forum is built for senior-level decision-makers working in the retail banking industry.

Over 2,000+ executives attend, representing over 700+ different financial institutions and nearly $10 trillion in combined assets.

Attendees work at financial institutions with an average asset size of $20 billion and a median asset size of $1.5 billion, with 91% of attendees coming from the U.S. and 5% from Canada.

Roughly two-thirds of attendees work directly for a retail financial institution. 63% of the attendees are VP-level or higher. The most common titles attendees hold include CEO, CMO, COO, EVP, VP, and AVP.

Attendees have said nothing aggravates them more than speakers who turn their sessions into sales pitches. Here are some verbatim statements from past attendees:

• “A few of the sessions were basically a one-hour pitch for whatever the presenter was selling.”
• “Many sessions were thinly-veiled product demos.”
• “Some of the vendors gave overviews of what they do instead of giving me takeaways.”
• “I come to the conference to hear about best practices, not from vendors selling their services.”
• “It seems like some sessions were ‘pay-to-play’.”
• “A few of the ‘classes’ I went to were much more ‘sales pitch’ than informational.”

That’s why we have a simple policy: Any speaker who sells from the stage will be banned from the conference for life.

We realize that many companies see public speaking as a business development tool, and speakers would like to come away from their session with dozens of new leads. But we promise: if any part of your presentation includes a “sales pitch,” it will backfire.

Follow these tips and the odds that attendees will want to do business with you will increase exponentially:

• Make your session educational and teach people how to accomplish something important — whether they work with your firm or not.
• Avoid mentioning your company during your presentation.
• Don’t talk about any proprietary tools/solutions, or any branded products/services your company offers.
• Keep your session focused on “how-to.” If you spend too much time on “why you should,” attendees will assume you’re just trying to justify why they should work with your firm.
• Don’t include case studies and examples of client work unless it’s absolutely relevant.
• Include examples and case studies of work your company didn’t do. This builds a lot of credibility.