Within the financial services sector, firms’ credibility rests on the quality of their research and analysis – the same principle underlying the robustness of thought leadership campaigns and market research studies.

High quality research inputs are the bedrock of reliable and insightful thought leadership and will ultimately determine if a study’s findings are taken seriously and acted upon.

Surveys remain the go-to method of capturing the primary research data that lends legitimacy and authority to these studies and for good reason. But not all surveys are built the same. And not all surveys have credibility. And when selecting a research partner, today’s marketers have the unenviable task of wading through a long list of organisations claiming to have access to niche target audiences when, in reality, they are generalist B2B agencies.

In an industry where relationship-building and trust are vital, specialisation really matters. Below, we set out some key questions financial services marketers should ask when searching for a reliable and authentic partner for a research campaign.

Do they have a proprietary panel?

The first question you should ask any research provider is arguably the most important: do they have a proprietary database? At CoreData, we have been building our own database for the better part of two decades and it encompasses a large sub-set of financial professionals including institutional investors, wealth/advisory, gatekeepers and (U)HNW investors.

Applying this critical criterion of a proprietary database will not only narrow your search for the right research partner but establish a key due diligence differentiator: control over recruitment.

Research providers that outsource respondent recruitment face the same dilemmas and difficulties as you do when considering a vendor: are these external partners really accessing the right kind of respondent? Or in some scenarios, does the outsourcing partner they’re relying upon have the robust governance and oversight processes in place to ensure they are not receiving fraudulent responses?

This situation can thus create a whole host of challenges as you will need to apply another layer of due diligence to the partners that your partners are working with. On top of that is the added uncertainty of whether their outsourcing partners are themselves outsourcing to recruit part of their sample, adding yet another tier of complexity and opaqueness.

If they have a panel, how do they recruit and engage members?

If a provider has built their own panel that sits behind their research, this is generally a good sign. But that alone is not sufficient when targeting specialist financial services decision-makers.

Some providers may have built generalist business panels in an attempt to serve clients across multiple sectors. This could mean they lack a sufficient number of respondents within your target universe and/or only contact them intermittently when needs arise – resulting in respondents that are not highly-engaged.

Such considerations can render the search for a plausible panel an arduous task. With that in mind, we’ve created a practical set of questions to help you determine the value of a research panel for your specific needs:

• How generalist or targeted is the sector makeup of the panel?
• How regularly does the panel engage with surveys on the topic you are researching?
• Is the panel provided with sector-specific content and peer-to-peer discussion opportunities?
• What channels does the agency employ for recruitment?
• How do they verify respondent details?
• How do they determine the classification of their organisations?
• What is the preference for participation? (Computer-Assisted Web Interviewing/ Computer-Assisted Telephone Interviewing)
• During fieldwork, are send-outs targeted and specific or simply dispatched en masse via blanket send-outs to the whole database?
• Can they conduct follow-up, qualitative interviews with survey participants?
• How do they incentivise their respondents to take part?

The incentives that research partners offer respondents upon survey completion are especially important for B2B audiences comprised of professionals with busy schedules. These audiences often require a hefty financial incentive to take part – so if a research partner is unable to explain their incentive process, this should raise another red flag.

How well do they understand the respondent universe?

A sector specialist with their own panel has the ability and knowledge to understand the universe they’re servicing across all geographies covered. They will likely have a high degree of knowledge of the different taxonomies extending across that universe as opposed to just applying blanket, high-level categorisations to their respondent base.

At CoreData, we have meticulously created a wide category of organisation types in our database which are refined further in survey screeners to ensure we’re targeting the right people in the right organisations.

An example of the limitations of blanket categorizations in the asset owner market would be ‘pension fund’ which means different things in different geographies. This label encompasses organisation types including occupational trusts in the UK, collective defined contribution funds in the Netherlands and mandatory private pension managers in Mexico or Chile.

Another example is ‘financial adviser’ which includes bank-tied, independent or even insurance agent depending on the country’s regulatory regime. Through years of conducting specialist financial services studies across many countries, we have mapped out in detail the different respondent universes – which in some cases may be limited to just a few hundred decision-makers and in others may stretch to thousands. This has shaped our approach to feasibility, quota design and what a representative sample means within different industry segments.

Moreover, universes are not static but rather constantly evolving amid developments such as new pension reforms or consolidation. Critically, a specialist agency with a proprietary panel can track these developments in real time to ensure their panel is a snapshot of the current state of the industry rather than a repository of outdated definitions.

Have they built longstanding relationships – and can they leverage them?

Understanding the universe you service is the first critical step in building a proprietary panel. But to ensure continual success and growth, research partners need to treat their panel as a relationship asset rather than just a list.

The relationship between both parties is not confined to the exchange of money for answers. It is much more than that, as evidenced by the approach we have built. It is an opportunity for professionals in the field to contribute their voice to important industry matters. We are always keen to share findings with respondents to demonstrate how their involvement has helped shape and inform discourse on contemporary topics.

This relationship-building also extends to the survey design itself. A good survey needs to satisfy several objectives: ensure questions are directly relevant for panel members, extract as much insightful data as possible, and make the survey as time-efficient and user-friendly as possible for respondents. We’ve had the opportunity over the years to conduct trial and error experiments to understand what works – something we would be unable to do without feedback shared from our trusted panel members.

Furthermore, this close contact with panel members affords us the opportunity to expand the scope of the project by inviting survey respondents to take part in follow-on in-depth interviews. This is another key due diligence selection criteria as some research projects require a complementary combination of quant and qual inputs. A research partner without a proprietary panel will lack the ability to directly reach out to survey respondents for follow-on opportunities.

An actively-engaged panel also provides opportunity to draw on the expertise of members during the research design phase to refine themes, identify unanswered questions and spot whitespace opportunities. This may include holding working groups and roundtables, both for specific research projects and to give panel members the opportunity to connect with peers and debate key industry issues.

Are fieldwork timelines realistic?

A realistic fieldwork timeline can only be devised by partners with repeated experience of dealing with multiple industry segments, knowing how many people fit the brief and understanding the practicalities of reaching them.

Fieldwork length is usually a product of two variables: incidence (rarity of the respondent profile) and reachability (how challenging it is to get a respondent’s participation and time). Furthermore, clients will often add extra layers of specificity such as organisation size, role seniority and specific investments held in portfolios.

These components should go hand-in-hand. It is essential to work with research providers that don’t just have a proprietary panel but also understand the minutiae of each market to set out realistic timelines.

Another red flag to look out for are research providers that project the same fieldwork length across different channels. This indicates poor understanding of market dynamics and weak engagement with the panel.

Having strong relationships with proprietary panel members through regular interactions is a win-win. It means well-engaged panel members expect a steady flow of study invitations and will be quicker to respond – helping to expedite fieldwork time. But even then, senior financial services audiences are time-poor and may require reminders over several weeks before they find time to participate.

So while it may be tempting to contract an agency promising to gather several hundred responses over 7-10 days, there will undoubtedly be a trade-off with the quality of respondents.

And in cases where you need to speedily produce insights on a time-sensitive topic, it’s better to consider smaller survey sample sizes and shorter, more targeted questionnaires.

In a crowded thought leadership space, the ability to cut through the noise with robust, reliable and actionable insights is all-important. But to achieve this you need to find a research partner that is credible, transparent and trustworthy and knows financial services inside out. And critically, they need to have a proprietary panel of well-engaged members who are experts in their field.

Daniel Zorrilla Fernandez is a senior research consultant at CoreData Group, a global specialist financial services research and strategy consultancy. Daniel works closely with the in-house proprietary database team to ensure Anubis (CoreData’s financial services professionals database) is up-to-date, accurate and representative of the industry. To find out more about our industry insights and research programmes, you can reach him at [email protected]