Creativity is not a luxury in financial services marketing; it’s a business necessity. Whether you’re rebranding, launching something new, or trying to connect with clients in a meaningful way, strong creative work makes all the difference.
But building that capability in-house? It often comes with more headaches than expected, like hidden costs, slower timelines, and stretched teams. That’s why more firms are turning to outsourcing partners, not just to save money, but to move faster and make a bigger impact. Deloitte’s 2024 Global Outsourcing Survey found that 96% of organizations surveyed leverage third-party outsourcing for their talent needs.
Here is a closer look at the real costs of maintaining an in-house creative team and how outsourcing can help solve for these challenges.
1. Recruiting: A Long, Costly Hunt for Talent
Finding experienced designers, copywriters, video editors, and creative strategists with financial services expertise can be tough. The best creatives are in high demand, and the recruiting process can drag out for months. Add in recruiter fees, advertising costs, signing bonuses, and the internal time spent reviewing resumes and interviewing candidates, and suddenly, building that dream team is a six-figure investment before your new hire even starts.
Outsourcing Advantage:
An established creative services provider already has the talent in place. With a seasoned external partner, you bypass recruiting headaches and gain instant access to a full bench of creative professionals with experience in the nuances of financial services as well as working with leading martech platforms and creative software.
2. Training: Teaching Your Industry
Once you land top creative talent, onboarding them to the unique nuances of your firm (regulatory requirements, compliance considerations, brand voice, etc.) takes time and resources. In the financial services industry where trust, accuracy, and precision are paramount, creative mistakes can be costly.
Outsourcing Advantage:
A specialized creative partner understands the financial sector’s specific demands from day one. Their teams are trained to create compliant, effective content without the lengthy ramp-up time, meaning faster project turnarounds and fewer risks.
3. Turnover: The Unpredictable Budget Killer
Creative professionals are not immune to job-hopping, and when a designer or strategist walks out the door, they can take institutional knowledge and momentum with them. Each departure means more recruiting, more training, and often, project delays that hit your bottom line.
Outsourcing Advantage:
External providers manage their own staffing needs, ensuring your projects continue seamlessly no matter what’s happening internally. They will also have an ongoing recruiting process to support attrition and fluctuations in work. You get all the stability without the HR burden.
4. Tools & Technology: An Expensive Arms Race
Professional creative tools, like Adobe Creative Cloud, project management systems, UX/UI design platforms, and stock imagery libraries aren’t cheap, especially when you start stacking up enterprise licenses. There’s also the need to stay on top of the latest technology trends (AI-generated content, personalization tools, video production advancements to name a few). Keeping your in-house team fully equipped means a continuous cycle of licensing fees, upgrades and training.
Outsourcing Advantage:
Sophisticated outsourcers invest heavily in the latest tools and technology, so you don’t have to. By outsourcing, you instantly benefit from cutting-edge technology (and experience using it), without the capital expense or ongoing maintenance.
Why Financial Firms are Rethinking In-house Models
When you add up the hidden costs of recruitment, training, turnover, and technology, maintaining an in-house creative team can cost significantly more than working with an outsourcing partner. A specialized creative services provider brings talent, quality, global delivery and agility all in one package, significantly reducing the in-house burden.
For financial services companies, this translates to more time for strategic thinking, more time for nurturing client relationships and more time focusing on business development.
Learn more about how our creative teams and presentation specialists can help you do more.