By Jordan Baker, Founder of Fair Public Relations and former UK national journalist
Money stories affect almost everybody.
Interest rates, pensions, tax changes, household finances, investment markets, business costs, retirement and changes to government policy can all create questions that ordinary readers need help understanding.
That creates regular demand for credible financial experts.
But "finance expert" is far too broad a label on its own.
An accountant, financial adviser, investment professional, mortgage specialist and tax practitioner may all work with money while having very different qualifications, permissions and areas of professional competence.
The key to getting quoted is therefore not simply announcing that you are a finance expert.
It is establishing what you legitimately know, where your professional boundaries sit and how that knowledge can help explain a story.
Why do journalists need financial experts?
Financial journalism often starts with information that needs interpretation.
An official announcement may be technically accurate but difficult for an ordinary household to understand.
A new rule may have different implications for different people.
Economic data may need context.
A business trend may affect cash flow, hiring or investment decisions.
Journalists therefore need people who can answer questions such as:
What does this actually mean?
Who might be affected?
What should readers understand before reacting?
What are the common misconceptions?
What wider context is missing?
The strongest expert does not merely repeat the announcement.
They add understanding.
What can accountants comment on?
It depends on the accountant.
Potential media areas may include business costs, bookkeeping, cash flow, tax-related announcements, financial management, common mistakes made by small businesses and practical questions around running company finances.
A specialist accountant may have much narrower and deeper expertise.
That should determine the pitch.
A journalist covering a tax development may need a professional who genuinely works with that area rather than somebody whose accounting experience sits elsewhere.
Jurisdiction matters too.
UK tax commentary cannot simply be repackaged for a Canadian or US audience.
Where current rates, allowances or rules are relevant, those facts need checking at the point the commentary is prepared.
What can financial advisers comment on?
Again, the answer depends on professional scope.
Potential subjects can include pensions, retirement planning, saving behaviour, investment-related developments, financial decision-making and the way households respond to economic changes.
The purpose of media commentary is normally to explain, not to provide personalised advice to an individual reader whose circumstances the expert does not know.
That distinction becomes particularly important in regulated finance.
In the UK, FCA rules around financial promotions require regulated communications falling within the rules to meet standards including being clear, fair and not misleading. What constitutes a financial promotion depends on the content and context, so a regulated professional or firm should apply its own compliance process rather than assuming a newspaper quotation automatically falls outside every regulatory requirement.
The US and Canada have their own frameworks. SEC-registered investment advisers, for example, are subject to the SEC Marketing Rule for covered advertisements, including restrictions on misleading statements. Canadian investment dealers and their approved persons operate under CIRO public-communications requirements that likewise prohibit false or misleading material.
This is why Fair establishes professional boundaries with finance experts before pitching them.
PR does not override regulation.
Which publications might use financial commentary?
The opportunity is much broader than specialist investment media.
Consumer publications need money experts.
National newspapers cover pensions, savings, tax, household bills and retirement.
Business publications need context around company finances, economic developments and the pressures facing employers.
Trade publications may want considerably more specialist analysis.
Broadcast journalists also use financial professionals where a subject benefits from somebody explaining it directly.
The aim should not be to demand one famous finance publication.
It should be to identify the places where the expert's actual knowledge is relevant.
What makes a credible financial media source?
Start with an accurate biography.
What is the person's professional role?
What qualifications do they hold?
Which firm do they represent?
Where do they work?
What jurisdictions are relevant?
What subjects do they advise on?
What should they not be presented as an expert in?
Credentials need to be verifiable.
So does professional experience.
Then comes communication.
Financial professionals can become accustomed to language that feels completely normal inside their industry and impenetrable outside it.
The journalist needs the expert to retain the accuracy while explaining the issue in language appropriate to the audience.
That ability is extremely valuable.
Robert Cannon is a good example
Fair's historic campaign for Robert Cannon of Experity Wealth shows what expert-led finance PR can look like.
Robert had more than three decades of professional experience and could credibly discuss a relatively broad but coherent set of subjects around personal finance, investment, wealth, retirement and financial behaviour.
He was also open-minded, happy to give an actual opinion and good at explaining complicated subjects.
That matters.
The campaign did not depend on repeatedly announcing that Experity Wealth existed.
It centred on making Robert useful to journalists.
Over the three-month historical campaign, Fair recorded 17 published media placements across six publication titles, with 16 of the 17 campaign records carrying backlinks.
Coverage included publications and syndication destinations such as U.S. News & World Report, Yahoo Finance, NASDAQ and GOBankingRates.
These were results from a previous wider Fair PR campaign and should not be treated as promised performance from the new Expert Commentary PR service.
They do, however, illustrate the potential of having a credible professional who can participate in many relevant editorial conversations.
Another finance expert does not need to copy Robert
Fair has also worked with Rakhee Wood of Butterfly Financial Planning, an independent financial adviser with more than 20 years of experience.
Her expertise includes pensions, retirement planning, investments, savings, inheritance planning and helping people make financial decisions during major life changes.
The editorial possibilities therefore look different.
Potential questions around retirement, changing careers, divorce, savings or financial confidence may fit that positioning naturally.
That illustrates an important principle.
Do not create a generic "finance expert" persona.
Build media topics around the professional standing and real-world work of the individual.
How do you identify stories worth commenting on?
Start with the news.
If there is an official announcement relevant to the person's expertise, ask what readers are likely to misunderstand about it.
Look at seasonal moments too.
The end of a tax year.
Retirement decisions.
University students managing money for the first time.
Wedding spending.
Christmas finances.
Home buying.
Career changes.
Then look at patterns the expert sees through their work.
The useful PR question is:
What does this professional know that could make a current story easier for a reader to understand?
What makes a strong financial expert quote?
Imagine a journalist asks about households moving savings after an interest-rate change.
A weak answer might be:
"Our award-winning advisers offer bespoke solutions to help every client maximise their financial potential. Contact us today for a complimentary consultation."
That is advertising.
A more useful answer would explain that a headline rate should not necessarily be considered in isolation, identify one or two practical factors people may overlook and make clear that individual circumstances differ.
The second answer teaches the reader something.
The expert still receives attribution.
Their company may still be named.
But the knowledge comes first.
What compliance issues should finance experts consider?
Professional regulation varies substantially.
An expert may need to consider their authorisation, employer policies, professional body requirements, client confidentiality, conflicts of interest and the difference between general education and regulated individual advice.
Specific product recommendations can create much greater compliance considerations than broad explanation.
Performance claims require particular care.
So do predictions.
Fair's role is to help produce understandable editorial commentary.
The expert and, where relevant, their firm's compliance function remain responsible for determining whether the proposed comment sits within their professional and regulatory obligations.
Should accountants and financial advisers do their own PR?
They can.
The actual expert knowledge already belongs to them.
The time-consuming part is often everything surrounding it.
Monitoring the media.
Filtering relevant opportunities.
Understanding what the journalist is actually asking.
Writing an accessible response.
Finding contacts.
Pitching.
Following up.
Recording results.
If a professional enjoys doing that and has the time, DIY PR can work.
If they would rather concentrate on clients, an expert-commentary service may make more sense.
When is broader Finance PR needed?
Expert Commentary PR is appropriate where the media asset is principally the individual's professional knowledge.
A fintech launching a new product is different.
A wealth-management business announcing an acquisition is different.
A financial-services company needing corporate positioning, founder PR, original research, business announcements and a wider campaign is different again.
Those needs are better routed through Finance PR or Standard PR.
How can an accountant turn a news announcement into useful commentary?
The announcement itself is rarely the expert's main contribution. A budget measure, tax deadline, change in business conditions or financial report is already available to a journalist. What the journalist often lacks is an explanation of what it changes for a defined group of readers. An accountant can be useful by distinguishing the announcement from its practical consequences, identifying which people or businesses may be affected and explaining what information they should check before making a decision.
Imagine, for example, that new administrative requirements are announced for small employers. One accountant might respond with a general sentence about the need to keep good records. Another might explain which types of employers are likely to find the transition difficult, what information a payroll team would need to gather and which misunderstandings are already appearing in client conversations. The latter response gives the journalist something to work with. It remains necessary to verify the actual requirement and effective date rather than turning a plausible scenario into a claim about current law.
The best commentary also recognises what cannot yet be known. If the final government guidance has not appeared, an expert should say so. An accurate explanation of uncertainty is more valuable than an apparently decisive quotation based on an assumption. A journalist can still use the expert to explain the questions readers should ask, the distinction between proposed and confirmed changes, and where authoritative updates will be published.
What can financial advisers explain without turning an article into personal advice?
Financial advisers may be able to help readers understand the mechanics of pensions, protection, savings behaviour or longer-term planning. But a public article and a personal recommendation serve different purposes. General commentary might explain why two people at different life stages could think about risk differently; it should not suggest that everyone should buy the same investment or restructure their pension in response to a headline.
Consider a story about households feeling nervous when markets fall. A useful adviser might explain the distinction between short-term volatility and individual time horizons, why emergency cash needs matter, and why making an irreversible decision out of fear can have consequences. That is commentary on principles. It is not a personalised assessment of any reader's finances. The quotation should make its assumptions plain, remain within the adviser's actual competence and be checked against applicable compliance requirements before it is sent.
An adviser who specialises in retirement planning should not feel obliged to offer an opinion on every business acquisition, cryptocurrency announcement or tax dispute simply because money appears somewhere in the story. Subject relevance is a strength, not a limitation. It makes the adviser's profile easier for a journalist to understand and increases the chance that future enquiries concern subjects they genuinely know.
How should you choose the right media subjects for your specialism?
Start by listing the recurring questions real clients ask. These might involve cash flow, succession planning, bookkeeping errors, common misunderstandings about pensions or the difference between a financial rule and a popular myth. Then separate questions that have genuine public value from those that are only interesting to the profession itself. The purpose is not to repackage client advice as promotional content; it is to spot broader confusion that readers of a publication may share.
Next, match each subject to an identifiable audience. A business publication may need an accountant to explain a cost or reporting issue for employers. A consumer title may want a properly qualified source who can put a household finance change into context. A regional journalist may be looking for practical insight into a local business trend. One expert should not pitch all three with an identical quotation. The facts, level of detail and reader needs differ.
A useful planning exercise is to write three versions of the same topic: a fifty-word explanation for a general audience, a more detailed answer for a specialist trade journalist and a short list of questions that still need to be checked. That exercise reveals whether you genuinely understand the story and can explain it accessibly. It also prevents long, technical copy being sent to a journalist who has asked for a clear, quotable observation.
What makes financial commentary quotable rather than merely accurate?
Accuracy is the starting point. To become a useful quotation, a response usually needs to make one understandable point. It should tell the reader what the situation means, why it matters and which qualification prevents the answer becoming misleading. A technically correct paragraph full of caveats, unexplained initials and internal professional language can still be unusable in a general newspaper article.
For a hypothetical story on the cost of running a small business, a weak answer might say that financial planning and compliance remain important in a changing economic environment. That statement could have been written by almost anybody. A stronger accountant might explain that a rise in operating costs can affect a business differently depending on when it receives customer payments, whether its costs are fixed and how much cash it has available. Those concrete distinctions help readers understand the story without pretending to know every business's circumstances.
The journalist may also need a brief attribution, such as an accurate role, relevant qualification and the name of the organisation. Keep that information separate from the substantive quotation. If the first half of the answer is a company description, a list of services or a request for a website link, the useful part is harder to find. Commercial identity can be included where editorially appropriate, but the commentary must stand on its own.
How can you use anonymised client experience without breaching confidentiality?
First-hand professional experience can make commentary particularly valuable. An accountant may notice a pattern in questions from small employers; an adviser may see several clients misunderstand the same principle. Those patterns can help a journalist explain a wider issue. But a client conversation does not become public material simply because identifying names have been removed.
Before referring to a specific situation, consider whether details such as industry, location, transaction size, family circumstances or timing could still identify the person concerned. Professional duties, employer policies, data protection and client confidentiality all need to be respected. Where permission is required, obtain it through the appropriate process. If permission or anonymisation cannot be established safely, use a clearly labelled hypothetical illustration instead.
A useful alternative is to describe a general issue without implying an evidenced trend you have not measured. Saying 'A common problem worth checking is whether payment dates match payroll obligations' is different from claiming 'Most of our clients have missed payments this year.' The second is a numerical or prevalence claim that requires proper records and an appropriate basis. A journalist may quite reasonably ask how you know.
What should a finance expert prepare before a journalist gets in touch?
A short, accurate profile saves time. It should identify your current role, relevant qualifications or professional memberships, the subjects you can comment on, any important jurisdictional limitations and the kind of clients or work that underpin your experience. Have an approved headshot, a correct job title, an organisation website and a reliable way of contacting you available. None of these materials needs to be an extravagant media kit.
You should also decide who can approve public comments. An employed financial adviser may need a compliance officer or manager to review wording. A partner in an accountancy practice may have an internal sign-off procedure. For certain subjects, there may be additional restrictions about regulated promotions or public communications. Discovering those requirements ten minutes before a deadline is avoidable and can mean losing an otherwise appropriate opportunity.
Preparing does not mean drafting dozens of generic quotes in advance and sending them regardless of the question. It means creating a sound factual foundation that allows a relevant, fresh answer to be written quickly. Keep publicly defensible examples, authoritative reference material and frequently requested biographical details organised, then provide current commentary only when the actual story calls for it.
How do UK, US and Canadian media opportunities differ?
Location matters because financial rules, professional titles and reader assumptions vary. A UK accountant explaining a UK tax or reporting issue is not automatically the right person to interpret a US federal rule. Equally, an adviser with experience in one Canadian province should not imply that every rule or professional designation applies across the country. A journalist needs to know which jurisdiction the expert genuinely understands.
The issue is broader than regulation. A national business journalist may want a concise insight into what a trend means for businesses generally. A regional journalist might require local examples or knowledge of a specific market. A specialist investment or accountancy publication may expect more technical detail and may scrutinise sources differently. Good PR identifies that editorial fit before approaching the journalist.
If you advise clients across borders, describe exactly what cross-border expertise you have rather than assuming that an international client list proves authority everywhere. It is often better to decline an unsuitable enquiry and preserve a reputation for accuracy than to offer an overconfident opinion outside your professional remit.
How can a small finance practice assess whether media outreach is working?
A useful assessment begins with activity you can actually observe. Are the proposed topics relevant to your expertise? Are the resulting pitches accurate and distinctive? Are you receiving sensible journalist questions? Has the team obtained quotations, interview requests or editorial coverage in publications your potential clients might read? These are more informative than a count of generic emails sent without context.
When an article is published, review its actual content. Does it identify the correct expert and organisation? Is the quotation accurate and within professional limits? Does the publication reach an appropriate audience? A mention in a highly relevant finance trade publication may be more commercially useful than a brief appearance in a much larger outlet whose readers are unlikely to need your services. That assessment depends on your specific objectives.
Media exposure should not be presented as guaranteed enquiries. Prospective clients may encounter a quotation and seek more information later, but attribution is difficult and the outcome depends on many things outside the press article. You can ask new enquiries how they heard about you and observe branded searches or referral traffic, while recognising that these are imperfect signals rather than proof that one article caused a sale.
When should you politely decline a journalist's request?
An enquiry is not an obligation. Decline if the question falls outside your expertise, if your professional restrictions prevent comment, if confidential information would be needed, or if you cannot verify important facts in time. You can also explain that the available facts do not support the premise of the question. A thoughtful refusal is preferable to supplying an answer that could mislead readers or harm a client.
Sometimes the most useful response is to offer a narrower contribution: 'I cannot comment on that company's individual circumstances, but I can explain the general accounting principle involved.' The journalist may find that helpful, or may need a different source. Either result is acceptable. Responsible commentary strengthens the relationship between expert and newsroom over time because it establishes that the source knows the limits of their knowledge.
There is no need to turn down every difficult story. Difficult stories may be precisely where an experienced professional can help. The test is whether you have a legitimate, accurate and useful contribution, not whether the headline is comfortable or favourable to the wider industry.
What does a realistic first three months of expert outreach look like?
In the first stage, the PR team should understand the expert's genuine specialisms, relevant professional restrictions, available background material and practical responsiveness. That work matters because a broad label such as 'finance professional' is not enough to pitch accurately. A good profile might identify payroll and small-employer administration, retirement planning or business cash-flow management as separate editorial subjects with different audiences.
The next stage is testing live opportunities and developing proactive angles. Some requests will be unsuitable or arrive with unrealistic deadlines. Others may need a short explanation or interview. The expert should be prepared to provide source knowledge and check technical wording, while the PR team handles research, drafting and journalist contact within the agreed service scope. Relevance and responsiveness generally matter more than producing a large volume of generic pitches.
By the end of an initial period, the right review is not simply 'How many national newspaper articles did we get?' It is whether positioning has become clearer, the pitches have been well matched, the work has been handled professionally and any coverage or journalist engagement offers a worthwhile basis for continuing. Genuine editorial decisions remain outside the agency's control. A credible long-term approach leaves room to learn from what journalists actually respond to.
Frequently asked questions
Can accountants get quoted without previous media experience?
Yes. A journalist may be interested in an accountant with demonstrable experience who can explain the relevant issue accurately, even if they have never been quoted before.
Can a financial adviser comment on any money story?
No. A professional should only comment within their genuine expertise, relevant authorisation and applicable regulatory or employer requirements. Accountants and financial advisers do not necessarily have interchangeable qualifications.
Does a media quotation count as financial advice?
It depends on the wording and context. General commentary should not be treated as a substitute for individual advice. Regulated professionals must check any applicable rules and compliance requirements before approving comments.
Will appearing in the media guarantee enquiries or backlinks?
No. Editorial coverage, attribution, links and new business are all subject to factors beyond a PR agency's control. Historical campaign results are examples, not predictions for a new client.
Are you a qualified financial specialist with useful insights to share?
Fair Public Relations helps suitable experts develop and pitch credible commentary to relevant journalists.
Explore Expert Commentary PR to understand the eligibility requirements and scope, or see Finance PR if the publicity objective involves the wider business.
About the author
Jordan Baker is the founder of Fair Public Relations and a former UK national journalist with more than a decade of experience in journalism and PR. He writes about small-business PR, SEO and GEO strategy, AI search, earned media and practical ways businesses can build credible visibility without wasting money on work they do not yet need.
View Jordan Baker’s media expert profile
