90 Second Interview with Andrea Linehan

Malisha Patel, Manager of the Financial Services function at tml Partners, sat down with Andrea Linehan, former Global CMO of CurrencyFair and Zai, and Fractional CMO, to get her thoughts on career development, influential leadership and marketing and communications trends producing opportunities and challenges for business leaders.

Who is your business hero and why?

I am a fan of Codie Sanchez and her success and advocacy for what she calls ‘boring businesses’, those local companies that have strong financial fundamentals, are stable and profitable, but not necessarily sexy or on-trend (laundrettes, waste removal, carpet fitting etc). There’s too much emphasis on building the next highly speculative tech Decacorn, that the small profit engines of the economy are being passed over with a lot of potential wealth being left on the table.

I also admire what Daniel Schreiber and Shai Wininger (founders of Lemonade Inc) did for the insurance sector, they didn’t just overlay technology on an incumbent sector and call it innovation, instead they up-ended the insurance business model itself, tackling some of the longstanding flaws in how insurance works.

What is the best piece of career advice you’ve ever received?

Pay it Forward. Every good decision I have made in my career has usually been thanks to someone giving me a steer or insight based on experiences they have had. Those conversations have saved me time and helped me avoid missteps. Not every lesson needs to be learned first hand. But be sure to do the same for those coming behind you, share the raw truth, reveal the underlay and allow your experiences to bolster someone else’s journey. 

What has had the most influential impact on your leadership skills and why?

I have really paid attention to what aspects of people’s style of leadership resonated with me throughout my career. Whether that be their communication style, their demeanor, their thought process and reasoning and particularly how they navigated situations when promises weren’t delivered. Earlier in my career I emulated those people, tried their style on for size and then I put my own spin on it. Learning early on that power and leadership are not two sides of the same coin, has really shaped how I approach leadership.

What future trends do you think marketing and communications will see in your sector over the next five years?

I see a sharp consolidation of the fragmented C-suite roles. The Chief Digital / Content / Brand / Customer / Officer will consolidate and as CMOs we must ensure we claim those fragments before the Commercial or Product people do. The magic lies in the gray areas where functions overlap, so I see consolidation as positive. With regards trends, to name just two, function overlap and deep collaboration will be paramount when it comes to:

• Security and Trust: building and maintaining trust in FinTech is crucial. Marketing working closely with their Compliance counterparts to effect and highlight robust security measures, regulatory compliance, data privacy and financial safety, will be done much more cohesively than before.
• AI-Powered Marketing Automation: Marketing automation powered by AI is already popping up in most tools, as an enhancement in some and a bona fide paid add-on in others.  Marketing and Engineering will be equally culpable for the integrity, efficacy and usefulness of loading the tech stack with these capabilities. The advantages include advanced personalization, contextual messages at scale, streamlined customer interactions but the cost and time of maintaining said tools and limiting downtime could offset the advantages.

What has fundamentally changed about your industry since you started working in it?

Negative balance sheets and overinflated valuations has been the norm for a long time in FinTech but now the focus is sound business fundamentals, sustainable business models and profitability. I prefer this phase of an industry’s evolution because it weeds out the unnecessary products, services and business models that people and the economy do not really need and instead focuses attention on where real, economic and societal value can be generated. 

What advice would you give to someone in a senior marketing position who is looking to grow their career into a more commercial CRO/CGO/CEO position?

If your remit as a senior marketer is not already commercial, you have to ask yourself whether you have legitimate seniority in your role or do you just have a title that sounds like you do. It is near impossible to move into true senior roles, in any department, without there being a very clear commercial remit. And to transition into a CRO/CGO role or rise to CEO, you will need to be already demonstrating you have strong business acumen and financial literacy, and already baked into your day-to-day role. It will be essential to understand the financial aspects of the business by familiarizing yourself with its financial statements, non-marketing key performance indicators (KPIs), and the drivers of revenue growth and profitability. Get into cahoots with your CFO, she/he is at the epicenter and is a valuable source of those insights. 

Who are tml Partners?

tml Partners are Marketing and Corporate Affairs recruitment specialists with access to a global network of leaders.

Our Financial Services team work across senior marketing roles on a permanent or interim basis.

To learn how tml Partners can help you, get in touch with Malisha Patel: