PIMFA is the trade association for UK firms that provide wealth management, investment services and financial advice, in a sector that looks after £1.65 trillion in private savings and investments and employs more than 63,000 people. The industry had a perception problem, and PIMFA said so openly: it was seen as traditional, stuffy and boring, with a slant towards white, middle-class men. That image was making it hard for firms to attract and keep the talent they needed.
The workforce was ageing, and member firms knew they needed a younger, more diverse intake, both for fresh thinking and to reflect clients who are themselves increasingly diverse. PIMFA committed to making the sector more diverse, inclusive and accessible, and in 2022 it brought Outfly in to turn that commitment into a campaign the whole industry could get behind.
We started by listening. A steering group of industry CEOs, HR directors and up-and-coming talent gave us the view from both ends of a career, and they were candid. Most people don’t know what wealth management is, many assume it is only for people who already have money, and some who work in it still don’t feel they belong. Even the word wealth put people off.
So we built an industry value proposition around wellbeing rather than money: a career in which you harness finance as a tool for wellbeing, for yourself and for others. We called the campaign Make It, a call for new talent from every background to come in, reshape old traditions and make it in their own careers. It is organised around four themes, each with its own colour and slogan:
The identity is deliberately loud for a sector known for being quiet: bold Gibson type, one bright colour per theme, and underlined headlines that take the myths on directly, from ‘You don’t need a degree to shatter the glass ceiling’ to ‘You don’t need a degree to protect their pension’.
At its heart is a series of 14 short films. We filmed people of different ages, backgrounds and roles from member firms in offices across the country, from London to Manchester, talking about what they do, how they got in and why it matters to their clients. The films live on the Make It microsite at pimfa.co.uk/makeit. The work was timed for a showcase reel at PIMFA’s D&I awards in October 2022 and the microsite’s launch at its D&I conference that December.
Around the films we planned the social launch: a teaser in December, then a week for each theme in the new year, with posts that bust myths about the industry, list the roles on offer and set out the ways in, from school leaver schemes to apprenticeships and graduate programmes. By February 2023 the campaign had been covered in the Financial Times.
It’s been a great journey so far. We’ve loved the positivity, great ideas, and are thrilled with the results. Thank you to you all at Outfly, and here’s to all the great work to come.
Sheena Gillett, PIMFA
Make It was built for the whole industry to use, not just PIMFA. We packaged it into a talent toolkit for member firms, with the logo, social post and story templates, website banners, profile headers, office posters, an exemplar job description and a style guide, so any firm can join the campaign and adapt it to its own hiring. The campaign sits within TIDE, PIMFA’s initiative for Talent, Inclusion, Diversity and Equality, and we gave TIDE its own identity: a 3D wordmark with each letter rendered in a different material.
The campaign also led to the next step. In 2023 we ran workshops with early-career talent and with employers to scope the PIMFA Careers Platform. Talent asked for pay transparency, clear progression and people in the industry who look and sound like them. Employers wanted the focus on inclusion rather than diversity alone, and an apply button that sends candidates to their own careers pages. That shaped an MVP that is part job board, part learning hub, helping candidates understand the sector and prepare to succeed in it.
Outfly, a London brand, marketing and product agency. Outfly developed the Make It proposition and identity, produced its 14 recruitment films, planned the social launch, built the talent toolkit for member firms, designed the TIDE identity and scoped the PIMFA Careers Platform.
Make It is PIMFA’s industry-wide recruitment campaign showing that careers in wealth management and financial advice are for everyone. It is built on four themes of wellbeing, career, personal, people’s and societal, each with its own colour and slogan, such as Learn it. Earn it. Make it.
TIDE stands for Talent, Inclusion, Diversity and Equality. It is PIMFA’s initiative to build a more diverse and inclusive wealth management and financial advice workforce, and Make It is one of its key projects. Outfly designed the TIDE identity, a 3D wordmark.
Everything a member firm needs to join the campaign: the Make It logo, social post and story templates, website banners, social profile headers, A4 office posters, an exemplar job description and a style guide, ready to adapt for its own hiring.
