The industry event FinMarketing 2026 took place in Kyiv, dedicated to the development of financial marketing, communications, brands, and customer experience. The event brought together around a hundred CMOs, CEOs, and executives from the financial and fintech sectors, who discussed how the role of marketing in financial business is changing, how brands can build trust with their audience, and which approaches will determine the effectiveness of financial communications in the coming years. Participants paid particular attention to the new rules of communication and the factors they believe will determine brand success in 2027: trust, personalization, technology, customer experience, and emotional connection with the audience.
Context and Participants of FinMarketing 2026
Opening the event, Rostyslav Duk, Chairman of the Board of UAFIK, presented analytics on marketing budgets in the banking sector and showed the volume of investments by financial institutions in marketing, communications, and brand development. These data sparked a conversation about how marketing in financial business is increasingly moving beyond the promotion of individual products. The focus is now on trust, customer experience, and long-term relationships with the audience, which means the very task of communications is changing: for brands, it matters not only what they say, but also how the market perceives their decisions.
The New Role of PR in Financial Communications
Against the backdrop of the overall discussion, participants spoke separately about the changing role of PR. If the communications function was previously seen primarily as a way to explain a decision already made by the business, today its role can be broader. This point was illustrated during the discussion by Larysa Irkha, Head of PR at Moneyveo, who noted that communications can be useful even before a final decision is made — when the business is only evaluating possible scenarios. In such a model, the PR team looks at the future decision from the perspective of the external audience: forecasting customer reactions, media questions, potential points of misunderstanding, and reputational risks.
Communications as a Feedback Channel
For the money sector, this approach has practical significance: companies' decisions directly affect customers, and any changes can raise questions not only about the product or service itself, but also about the brand's reliability and openness. Therefore, in this model, communications become a kind of feedback channel — the team not only formulates the company's position for the external audience, but also helps the business hear the market's reaction and take it into account even before launching a decision. This approach fits into the broader transformation of financial marketing discussed at FinMarketing 2026.
FinMarketing Awards: Winners of the Year
The event concluded with the FinMarketing Awards ceremony. Among the winners were monobank, Oschadbank, Moneyveo, NovaPay, and other companies. The awards covered brand development, community, customer experience, digital communications, inclusivity, purpose-driven approaches, and brand transformation. It is worth noting that Moneyveo had previously become a triumphant winner of the PaySpace Magazine Awards 2025, taking home five awards in key categories.
