There's a specific kind of bad that financial services copy achieves. It's not incompetent. It's not offensive. It's just airless. Dense with terminology, light on meaning, written as if the goal was to sound credible rather than to actually communicate.
Most of the time, jargon is the culprit. And most of the time, the writer put it there on purpose. They thought that's what financial services copy was supposed to sound like.
It's not. And knowing that distinction is the first thing to look for when you're hiring.
Jargon is not expertise
This is the mistake financial services brands make over and over. They equate technical language with credibility. If the copy sounds like it came from inside the industry, it must be authoritative. Right?
Wrong. Your reader doesn't want to feel like they're reading a prospectus. They want to feel like someone finally explained this in a way that makes sense. The writer who can do that, who can take a complex financial product and make it feel accessible without dumbing it down, is harder to find than the one who can replicate your internal vocabulary.
Jargon is a shortcut. Plain language is the craft.
What to actually look for in a portfolio
When you're reviewing a financial services copywriter's work, don't just check for category experience. Check for clarity.
Can they write about money without making it feel like a chore to read? Financial copy has a reputation for being dry because most people writing it have accepted that reputation as inevitable. It isn't. Look for writers whose work on financial topics feels like the rest of their work: engaged, human, worth reading.
Do they write for the reader or the brand? A lot of financial services copy is written to make the institution feel impressive. The best financial services copy is written to make the reader feel understood. Those are different briefs. The portfolio will tell you which one the writer is solving for.
Can they handle compliance without losing the voice? This is the real skill. Anyone can write clean, legally defensible copy. The question is whether they can do it and still sound like a human being. Look for work that's clearly been through a review process and still has personality in it. That's not easy to pull off.
The jargon test
Here's a simple one. Take a piece of their financial services work and read it out loud. Not in your head. Out loud.
If it flows, if it sounds like something a person might actually say, you're in good shape. If you find yourself stumbling over strings of industry terms, or reading sentences that are technically correct but feel like no one actually wrote them, that's your answer.
Good financial services copy passes the out-loud test. Most of it doesn't.
Experience in the category matters. But not the way you think.
You want a writer who understands how financial services works. Not so they can mirror the industry's existing language back at you, but so they can translate it. There's a meaningful difference between a writer who has learned the vocabulary and a writer who understands the underlying concepts well enough to explain them simply.
The first kind will write copy that sounds financial. The second kind will write copy that works.
Ask them to explain a complex product in two sentences, in plain language, to someone who has never heard of it. The answer will tell you everything.
One more thing
The best financial services copywriters are not impressed by the complexity of your product. They're interested in the person who needs it. That orientation, toward the reader and not the category, is what separates copy that informs from copy that actually moves people.
Jargon impresses insiders. Plain language convinces everyone else. And everyone else is who you're trying to reach.
If you're looking for a financial services copywriter who leads with clarity and leaves the jargon at the door, let's talk. I've spent 20 years translating complex topics into copy that real people actually read.