As financial institutions search for creative ways to reach consumers during the pandemic, more are turning to social media to advertise financial products and showcase their corporate conscience. But as banks double down on their social media strategies, focusing on humanizing the brand rather than selling products could yield greater returns in the long run.

“Now is not the time to be marketing,” said Doug Wilber, CEO of Gremlin Social, a platform that helps banks manage social media activity. “If you think about broader reach, deeper engagement and the ability to connect with a consumer in a one-to-one way, that is by and large a formula for success on social media, especially in the financial services industry.”

Gremlin Social’s platform is used by hundreds of banks, credit unions and other financial firms, like mortgage lenders and wealth management companies, that range in size and is endorsed by the American Bankers Association, Wilber said. The St. Louis, Mo.-based company believes building a connection directly between employees and consumers — versus with the brand account or a company’s social media managers — builds more trust and leads to more sales. But as more employees represent their FIs on social media, companies will need to install guardrails to ensure that connection doesn’t expose the company to brand and compliance risks.

Gremlin, a software-as-a-service company backed by financial software provider FIS, participated in FIS’ accelerator last June. It earns its revenue with a subscription package that provides financial institutions tools to satisfy regulatory requirements.

“We haven’t built our technology platform to adhere to the recommendations of one regulator, our viewpoint is that we provide a holistic solution that satisfies many of the requirements of a regulator, regardless of which agency they work for,” Wilber said. From a high-level view, banks need to know what is being said about their brand in the public domain, provide a workflow for employees to approve content before it’s public, and archive content that’s published on social media.

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“Banks and financial services firms … are concerned with ‘What happens if I start to become more active on social media and what is my risk exposure from a compliance perspective’ and then more importantly, ‘What’s my risk exposure, from a brand perspective?’” Wilber said.

One of Gremlin’s mortgage lender clients has reported that lenders who are more active on social media close about an extra loan every month, Wilber said. Employees also typically have broader reach than their brand accounts on social, affording greater exposure — for LinkedIn, employees have about 10 times more followers than the brands, and have about two times the engagement for each post, he said.

However, employees taking to social media should be careful with their messaging as posts that seem to serve the needs of the bank over customer needs can have lasting negative impacts. A recent survey and report from Gremlin found that 71% of consumers would lose trust in a brand that seemed to put profit before people. In turn, 84% of consumers said they would prefer to see advertising that is focused on helping people cope with changes during the impact.

“People buy from people — and we want to be able to empower executives within the financial services arena to build deeper, more meaningful connections with their customers,” Wilber said.