Fintech Lead Generation in Germany

Section 7 of the German Act against Unfair Competition (UWG) treats advertising by email without the recipient's prior express consent as an unreasonable nuisance, and this applies to business addresses as well. Section 7(3) has one exception: a company may email its own customers about similar products of its own if it got the address in a sale the customer has not objected, and it explains the right to object both when collecting the address and in every message. A sales call to a business needs at least the presumed consent of the person called, and to a consumer prior express consent.

A purchased contact list does not establish consent to receive advertising. Campaign data also falls under the GDPR. Record which company may contact a person, for what purpose and through which channel.

A bank buys through a group: the business unit that has the problem, IT, information security, compliance, purchasing and, for an outsourcing, the outsourcing officer that MaRisk requires. A lead list with one name per bank misses most of them. Savings banks and cooperative banks add a group level, because their core IT comes from Finanz Informatik and Atruvia, as core banking in Germany explains. Bank marketing goes through the three groups.

A webinar on DORA, the EU AI Act or MiCA can bring together people working on the same regulatory question. A meetup or roundtable provides time for a direct conversation. Finance Loop offers these formats through webinar partnerships.

Event registration alone does not authorize a sponsor to send advertising emails. Check the recipient's consent and the intended use of participant data before following up. Agree during the conversation whether a person wants a recording, further information or a meeting, and use B2B event marketing measures to evaluate the response.

Partners can reach more than 4,000 members through webinars for around 50 to 200 attendees, meetups for up to 120 people and hosted events for 100 to 150. Finance Loop promises no number of leads or deals; the attendance and the follow-up depend on the subject and the partner.

Lead generation in banking is the search for people or companies who may become clients of a bank or buyers of a product for banks. When a fintech sells to banks, a lead is a contact at a bank who has a matching problem and the role to act on it.

Advertising emails generally require prior express consent under section 7 UWG, including when sent to business recipients. The existing-customer exception in section 7(3) applies only if all its conditions are met. An event registration or professional-network connection is not, by itself, consent to receive a sponsor's advertising.

Because the vendor has to pass the bank's outsourcing and ICT risk checks under MaRisk and DORA, agree the contract clauses these rules require and go through purchasing before anything is signed. Lead generation for banks is therefore planned over quarters, with several contacts per institution.