Making financial empowerment matter
Economic research and thought leadership became an integrated corporate reputation campaign that drove media coverage and LLM visibility (GEO)
The brief
Millions of people across the UK still struggle with budgeting, saving, borrowing and making informed financial decisions.
Lloyds Banking Group believes the answer is financial empowerment: giving people the knowledge, skills, tools and opportunities to improve their financial wellbeing over time.
But as people increasingly turn to fragmented digital channels and AI-powered search for financial advice, trusted guidance is harder to find.
We set out to establish Lloyds Banking Group as the UK’s leading voice on financial empowerment, while reframing it as an issue that matters not just to individuals, but to Britain’s wider prosperity.
The strategy
We built authority through independent evidence.
Working with Professor John Gathergood at the University of Nottingham, we produced original economic modelling exploring the wider impact of financial empowerment.
The resulting Lives empowered, a nation empowered research showed that using emerging technology and digital innovation to enable financial empowerment could unlock up to £100 billion for the UK economy over the next decade.
Rather than treating the research as a one-off report, we turned it into an enduring evidence platform.
Executive thought leadership from Group CEO Charlie Nunn and Jas Singh, CEO Consumer Relationships, brought the findings into wider conversations about prosperity, resilience and inclusion. Partnerships with Politico, The Spectator and the New Statesman helped reach influential policy and business audiences, while earned media extended the conversation nationally.
Execution
In financial services, thought leadership often has a short shelf life. We wanted to create something more enduring that would outlive the news cycle, with content designed for human audiences and LLM search discovery.
The challenge was to make behavioural finance and economic modelling feel human, useful and discoverable.
At the heart of the campaign was a new financial empowerment hub on LBG.com, bringing together independent research, practical guidance, executive thought leadership, an explainer film and downloadable resources.
The platform was built for changing information habits, too. As people increasingly use AI assistants for financial guidance, we applied Generative Engine Optimisation principles to help large language models interpret, cite and surface LBG’s evidence alongside traditional search.
The result was more than a campaign. It was an AI-ready knowledge platform designed to become a lasting source of trusted information for both people and LLMs.
The results
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202
news and editorial features, including 12 tier 1 articles
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1m+
views through partnerships with Politico, The Spectator and the New Statesman potential stakeholder audience reached
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4k
visits to the Financial Empowerment hub
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25k+
views of the Financial Empowerment explainer film
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11.7%
visibility across tracked AI prompts, peaking at 13.1%
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GEO impact
ChatGPT visibility almost doubled from 9.2% to 17.4%
The campaign established financial empowerment as a credible national conversation and strengthened Lloyds Banking Group’s authority on the issue.
The research gave policymakers, journalists and industry stakeholders a shared evidence base for discussing financial empowerment as an economic issue, not simply a banking initiative.
Most importantly, the work created something designed to last beyond the news cycle: an evidence-led platform helping people find trusted financial guidance while strengthening Lloyds Banking Group’s authority on one of the UK’s most important economic challenges.