What Ei learned at the FMI Toronto FS Marketing Leaders’ Summit 2026
The event welcomed a band of experienced marketers and communications leaders from financial services firms. RBC Wealth Management, Scotia Wealth Management and CIBC Mellon were just a few of the brands present.
Styled as a think tank, the mission of the event was clear: to take a deeply practical look at how brand, content, and performance marketing are evolving in an AI‑accelerated world. Naturally, the impact of AI – and our human response to it – dominated the conversation.
Want the TL;DR?
AI has broken traditional search. Users who find your brand may never click a link. The onus is now on storytelling with flair and originality, to stand out against a flat sea of AI-generated sameness.
The new winners in B2B marketing are those who create original, relevant stories to show their brand. They use AI as a printing press, to amplify authentic human voices and share bold ideas. Not as a replacement for judgment or creativity.
Top 5 things we learned at the Financial Services Marketing Leaders’ ThinkTank Toronto
1. Has AI has changed the game? No – Humans still set the rules
Generative search is reshaping how buyers discover you, with customers now hitting your website after you surface in an LLM chat. But as one speaker put it bluntly: “If you don’t take control, the machine will.” SEO, AEO, and GEO require different content and website structures, and different thinking. The firms winning in this environment are positioning themselves as authorities, not sellers — with answer-forward content, question-based site structures, and real experts front and centre.
2. What are the non-negotiables? Consistency and alignment across the business
Success depends on alignment across marketing, PR, communications and business leadership. Those creating content need access to senior leaders if they are to capture their authoritative voices. And the entire organization needs to agree – and hold fast to – what it stands for. In a fragmented, AI-mediated world, inconsistency is instantly visible.
AI is a powerful amplifier, but it amplifies what you put in. The FS marketing teams that will win under these circumstances combine smart AI adoption with independent thinking, authentic expertise, and the discipline to validate every output before it reaches the market.
Ei Advisory provides B2B sales and marketing intelligence that helps companies reach, engage and convert customers.
3. The scarcest resource in marketing right now? Originality
AI has driven down the cost of content and driven up the cost of standing out. Share of voice and brand attractiveness now matter more than ever, as LLMs surface brands that are genuinely talked about.
Earned media and authentic PR now directly feed into whether you appear in generative search results. Strong, original, conversation-starting content isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s a need-to-have. Buying your way to the top of Google rankings is no longer an effective marketing strategy.
4. You build trust in the AI era through an authentic, expert-led, brand voice
Thought leadership works best when there’s a real expert behind it with a name, a face and an email address.
FS marketers know that aligning your experts with customers greatly increases the likelihood – and $ size – of a deal. We need to apply that thinking to content creation, alongside meaningful in-person touchpoints with customers.
In an era of deepfakes and AI-generated content, in-person and human expert-led communication has become the only credible way to build trust.
5. Working with external (human!) partners will improve your marketing, but you cannot outsource compliance.
In an industry as highly regulated as Financial Services, there was strong consensus that no partner, artificial or otherwise, can replace your moral judgment or responsibility for compliance.
But there was equal consensus that external perspective is more valuable than ever.
The room felt that working with agencies brings what in-house teams structurally can’t: the freedom to be and to surface the moonshot ideas. Often, internal stakeholders are just too close to see the whole picture, so working with external partners to develop original perspectives and messages is vital.
As one leader framed it, outsourcing isn’t just about capacity, it’s about access to data, ideas, and perspectives that simply don’t exist inside your walls.
Get in touch via our website or LinkedIn to find out how we can help you build trust and relevance in complex markets, or contact Kathryn Essery, our Head of Client Relations, North America, on kathryn.essery@ei-a.com to discuss a particular issue on your desk.