José Villa, fundador y presidente de Sensis
For José Villa, Founder and President at Sensis there is a need for a new Hispanic approach for financial services, he wrote at MediaPost. He said that despite expenditures by the financial services category saw a major increase in allocation of overall ad spending to the Hispanic market between 2006 – 2010, according to AHAA, a closer look by industry sub-category shows “these numbers are heavily skewed by tax preparation and auto/home insurance companies, accounting for roughly 67% of the Hispanic financial services ad spend.” Villa explain that in the case of banks, investment firms and life insurance providers it is less than $130 million annually in Hispanic targeted media combined. “Their average allocation of overall ad spend to the Hispanic market is less than 2.5%” he wrote. For Villa, the main issue underlying this misallocation is the predominant “unbanked” and “underbanked” view of the Hispanic market by the financial services industry. But he explained that while underbanking characterized the majority of the Hispanic market 30 years ago, this is changing. According to the FDIC, as of 2013 48% of all Hispanics were fully banked, while only 18% remained unbanked. And while 29% are still defined as “underbanked” this group captures a lot of Hispanics using banking products in mainstream ways. “Financial services firms need to start moving on from this view of Hispanics as an underbanked segment and shift to viewing Hispanics as their core growth segment” he said. For Villa, this means a focus on basic education to one defined by cultural relevance and aspirational tones more aligned with the growth characterizing the Hispanic market. “The blueprint moving forward involves placing Hispanics front and center in their marketing efforts, from product design to advertising to customer service.”
