Fintech, Focus, and the Fight to Win: Inside a leading Global Growth Playbook

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This is your weekly does of business, marketing and tech updates. Lets get into it!

I’ve got an excellent one for you this week - a deep dive with Mike Logue, former Product and Marketing Director at IG Group. Mike lifts the lid on what it really takes to grow a FTSE250 trading brand across the US, Europe and Japan - from navigating brutal regulation to picking the right metrics and markets to scale.

Please, check out the video below and if you love this type of content, please comment, like and subscribe to Be Franc's YouTube channel.

In other news, Meta has stepped up its AI game — winning a major copyright case, recruiting top OpenAI talent, and doubling down on reasoning models that could shape the next wave of LLM development.

Elsewhere in marketing and tech this week:

• China and other developing nations are showing the highest levels of trust in AI, according to a new UN report.
• YouTube is quietly rolling out its own take on AI Overviews, while TikTok and Instagram are plotting TV app expansions to chase YouTube’s living-room dominance.
• Meanwhile, investor habits continue to shift, with nearly half of UK retail investors now turning to social media for financial insights.

I hope you enjoy this week’s newsletter edition. Please drop me an email with any feedback you have - I really do appreciate it.

Andy

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What you didn’t know about working in fintech

I’ve known Mike Logue for years, and few people cut through the noise like he does. In this conversation, we get into the real story behind IG Group’s global growth - from navigating regulation to knowing when to pull back, and how to build a marketing strategy that drives significant value.

Working in fintech: scale, saturation and strategic bets

Mike Logue didn’t join a scrappy fintech startup - he joined IG Group at a time when the category was still maturing but the road ahead looked wide open. With few direct competitors and a loyal trading base, growth was relatively straightforward. But those conditions didn’t last.

“The product was great. The brand was well-established. We had a unique position,” Mike recalls. “But the world changed - and fast.”

The shift wasn’t just about more competition. It was about the fragmentation of attention. New entrants like Robinhood, Revolut, and eToro didn’t just offer trading. They offered narratives — community, rebellion, financial empowerment — and they moved at pace. Meanwhile, COVID pushed retail markets into the cultural spotlight.

IG had to make a call: double down on high-value, active traders, or broaden the funnel and compete for newer, less experienced audiences. But doing both meant product change, positioning change — and tension between growth and brand integrity.

“The risk was dilution,” Mike says. “We had to be really clear on what we stood for.”

What followed was a set of strategic bets — on regions (like the US and Japan), on segments (like options traders), and on M&A (like Tastytrade) — all grounded in a single question: where can we win without losing who we are?

Marketing in a regulated world

By now, everyone in fintech knows the drill: you're not just marketing within the lines drawn by financial regulators — you're also playing by the rules of the platforms who gatekeep attention.

Mike calls them “the two regulators”: the FCA and BaFin on one side, and Google and Meta on the other.

But the nuance lies in how interpretation becomes the battleground.

“You can run a brand ad and a product ad that look visually identical — and one gets flagged, the other doesn’t,” he says. “The challenge is you’re operating in an environment where the rules aren’t just strict, they’re opaque and inconsistent.”

The stakes? High. Approval delays can wreck campaign timelines. Shifting platform policies can make a previously viable strategy unusable. And that’s before you factor in regional differences, internal compliance review loops, and the evolving risk appetite of exec teams.

Mike’s approach has been pragmatic: build close relationships with both internal legal teams and ad platform reps. Test relentlessly. Localise creative not just for culture but for compliance nuance. And use education to bring performance teams into the regulatory mindset.

“You need to bake in friction — because if you don’t, it’ll come back and hit you later.”

This isn’t about avoiding risk. It’s about knowing which risks to take, when, and with what backup plan.

Metrics that drive conviction, not just conversion

In fintech, everyone talks about LTV — but few use it to make decisions. Mike Logue does.

At IG, the model is transactional. Revenue flows not just from customer acquisition, but from consistent, high-frequency trading. Which means scale alone is irrelevant if you’re onboarding the wrong users.

“We’ve seen it clearly — the 80/20 rule is real,” Mike says. “A small group of clients generate a disproportionate share of value. The trick is knowing who they are early — and how to find more like them.”

To do that, IG’s marketing team focuses on signals that go beyond the surface:

• Acquisition volume still matters — but not in isolation.
• Early value indicators (like first deposits, product mix, and platform engagement) help predict long-term behaviour.
• Retention cohorts are scrutinised not just on churn, but on depth: what products do they adopt? When does drop-off spike?

This shift away from broad CAC targeting toward segment-specific predicted LTV has helped IG navigate an increasingly mixed customer base — from high-touch traders to crypto-curious newcomers.

“We always knew some clients were worth a lot more than others,” Mike says. “But the key is figuring out how to find more of them - and how to avoid the ones that are never going to be worth very much.”

And because IG operates across regions and regulatory environments, they also track performance by segment, market, and even product intent — all stitched together in a custom attribution and BI layer that prioritises value over volume.

M&A as a growth lever: the Tastytrade play

The acquisition of Tastytrade wasn’t a landgrab — it was a strategic bet on cultural alignment and segment depth.

“Options and futures are the trading products in the US,” Mike says. “And we didn’t really have that.”

Tasty brought more than product capability — it brought audience resonance. A strong, media-led brand with deep roots in the US retail trading space. Rather than folding it into the IG masterbrand, the team doubled down on what made Tasty distinctive — keeping the tone, identity, and creative DNA intact.

“We weren’t going to outspend Schwab or TD Ameritrade,” Mike recalls. “So we had to outthink them.”

That meant focusing on what Tasty did best: bold content, targeted partnerships, and a performance engine tuned specifically for US traders. The result? 20–25% YoY growth — not by rewriting the brand, but by scaling it with precision.

It’s a playbook grounded in restraint. No brand dilution. No copy-paste rollout. Just clear thesis-driven expansion: acquire a business that’s already winning, then give it the infrastructure to go further.

Market selection: where IG chooses not to play

Global expansion in fintech isn’t about planting flags — it’s about operational edge. And sometimes, the smartest move is not to enter at all.

Mike’s perspective is unambiguous: the opportunity cost of chasing unprofitable markets is too high.

“In Southeast Asia and Latin America, there’s a big offshore market,” he says. “People are running different kinds of business models — lower touch, sometimes outside the regulations. If you don’t have boots on the ground, local partners, a community — it’s really hard to make an impact.”

IG explored these regions but often found the economics didn’t stack up. Competing with lightly regulated or offshore brokers meant high CPAs, low LTVs, and product-market friction. And while others chase global surface area, Mike’s approach prioritised concentration over coverage.

“You can’t drop a UK product into Southeast Asia and expect it to work,” he says. “You’ve got to have a proper go-to-market. You need local comms, local people, and to make a real investment.”

In a sector obsessed with total addressable market, Mike’s approach reframes the growth conversation: not “where could we be?” but “where can we be material?”

Japan: when localisation means starting over

IG’s expansion into Japan wasn’t a tweak. It was a total rebuild.

Despite strong product fundamentals and a global brand, the original UK-centric playbook fell flat. Performance plateaued. Engagement was shallow. The signals were clear: the strategy needed rethinking from the ground up.

“We had a decent business in Japan,” Mike recalls. “But we weren’t really growing. It was ticking along, but we hadn’t localised properly.”

The fix wasn’t surface-level. IG restructured the entire operation — hiring local leadership, reworking the marketing strategy, and most importantly, launching a new product: Knockouts, tailored specifically for Japanese trading preferences.

“Knockouts really worked in Japan,” Mike says. “It suited the trading style, the way people thought about risk and reward.”

Crucially, they didn’t chase short-term wins. Instead, they committed to a five-year horizon — keeping the same creative platform, message hierarchy, and tone across all channels. Where others zigzag with rebrands and pivots, IG opted for disciplined repetition.

The results came gradually — not through brute-force budget, but through strategic alignment: localised media plans, in-language content, and a narrative architecture that resonated.

Japan now stands as IG’s benchmark for organic international growth — proof that success in complex markets isn’t about translating campaigns. It’s about rethinking the entire go-to-market equation.

Customer obsession over creative

Mike Logue doesn’t sugar-coat it: “A lot of people in marketing are a bit scared of data.”

At IG, that’s not an option. The team is expected to get comfortable with tools like Salesforce, GA4, ContentSquare, AEM, and XTM — not to tick boxes, but to make better decisions.

“You don’t need to know SQL,” Mike says. “But if you’re not in the data, you’re in the dark.”

That mindset goes beyond campaign performance. The team blends quant and qual - running CSAT surveys, brand tracking, and working with expert partners like Investment Trends.

“We run a lot of surveys,” Mike says. “And we work with people like Investment Trends.”

But data collection isn’t the end point. “You’ve got to make time to actually talk about the results and understand what they mean.”

Insight at IG isn’t left to analysts or siloed in reporting decks. It’s baked into the day-to-day: curiosity, iteration, and knowing what to ignore.

Martech stack: what he actually uses

Despite managing millions in paid media across seven languages, IG’s marketing team isn’t huge. And that’s by design.

Here’s what IG uses to operate at scale:

• GA4 – for web analytics
• ContentSquare – to analyse user journeys
• Salesforce – for CRM and journey mapping
• AEM – as the CMS
• XTM – for AI-powered translation
• SA360 / DV360 – to run Google campaigns globally
• Impact – to manage affiliate and partnership marketing

The real unlock isn’t just the tooling — it’s how the data flows across platforms.

“If your data flows work well, you can get the right level of automation,” Mike explains. “And you can do it at scale.”

IG’s approach is lean, but not lightweight. The marketing team is expected to engage with the tools directly, not hand off insight or execution. It’s this combination — autonomy + infrastructure — that lets them stay nimble in a complex, regulated, multilingual environment.

AI in fintech: from acceleration to invention

Like many in the industry, Mike Logue sees the value in AI. But he’s not dazzled by novelty — he’s focused on what actually moves the needle.

“At the moment, the way I’m seeing it being used is for efficiency,” he says. “So people are creating images quicker, checking stuff for compliance, using it for translation workflows.”

That’s the baseline. Where Mike sees real upside is when AI starts to transform not just how fast marketers work — but what they can build.

“The big unlock will be when people use it to create things that are different,” he says. “New products, new propositions — not just doing the same stuff faster.”

At IG, AI is already being used for translation (via XTM), content workflows, and behavioural analysis. But Mike’s focus is on the second curve: how to move beyond internal ops and apply AI to customer-facing experiences — especially in markets where education, decision support, and usability can be differentiators.

“I think the next big wave is: how do we use AI to help create something fundamentally better for the customer?” he adds.

It’s a pragmatic view: not automation for its own sake, but augmentation that redefines what the marketing and product stack can deliver.

Final thought: from evolution to edge

Across every topic — markets, metrics, media or M&A — Mike returns to the same principle: don’t just follow best practice, interrogate it. Whether it’s navigating double-layered regulation, choosing not to enter growth markets, or scaling high-value segments over headline numbers, the work is in the trade-offs.

It’s not about doing everything — it’s about doing the right things well, and knowing when to walk away.

That same mindset applies to AI. Yes, the tech is moving fast. But Mike doesn’t see it as a threat - he sees it as fuel.

“I’m an optimist,” he says. “I think it’s going to make marketing better. It’s going to make us faster. It’s going to make us smarter. And it’s going to push product innovation in the way that crypto once did.”

But tools alone won’t define the winners. The marketers who’ll lead the next wave of fintech growth are the ones who obsess over customer value, get fluent in data, and know how to balance brand, performance, and product in real time.