The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) role is always evolving, and this year, its trajectory looks different across various industries. While some Fortune 500 companies have made headlines for eliminating or restructuring the CMO role into broader functions like digital, strategy, or operations, the role of the CMO in the fintech sector is strong and expanding.
Each year, we speak with leading CMOs across fintech, payments and banking to highlight emerging trends and stay up to date on how CMOs think, what strategies they use and much more.
In this year’s study, we saw that the CMO role not only remains a centralized function but is transforming into an even more prominent role that is responsible for driving both brand value and business growth. What’s behind this trend? Our team identified three fundamental shifts that are defining the fintech CMO role and shaping the industry itself.
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 1) Fintech CMOs are not only building brands—they are driving business growth
Fintech CMOs are pushing traditional marketing boundaries as they become influential leaders that drive business-wide revenue growth. According to our study, CMOs are impacting more areas than ever, with their influence extending into product development, customer experience, and revenue functions. These CMOs are actively leading cross-functional initiatives to integrate strategies and drive organizational alignment.
As senior-level strategic leaders, CMOs are also central to shaping the customer experience, which is a critical driver of differentiation and fintech success. Their unique ability to align brand and product strategies with customer needs, combined with their deep market understanding, positions them as essential contributors to growth. Recent McKinsey research underscores this, finding that CEOs who place marketing at the core of their growth strategies are twice as likely as their peers to achieve greater than 5% growth.
The growing strategic importance of the CMO role is also reflected in their 2025 marketing budget forecasts. Our survey found that 82% of fintech CMOs plan to increase their marketing budgets, with the remaining 18% maintaining current levels—and notably, none are planning to dial their budgets back. This commitment to maintaining or growing the marketing investment signals a clear shift in perception: marketing is increasingly being viewed as a strategic driver of business growth rather than a cost center.
 2) CMOs have earned C-suite respect as strategic leaders
 With these shifts, fintech CMOs have established themselves as strategic leaders. In fact, 75% of the CMOs in our study say they believe they now have the respect they deserve from the C-suite. But this recognition didn’t come easily—it was earned through their demonstrated ability to connect marketing initiatives directly to business outcomes.
Maintaining this standing requires continuous proof of impact in a discipline that’s commonly regarded as both an art and a science. While attribution tools have improved, it can still be difficult to capture the full breadth of marketing’s influence. This requires alignment with the revenue, customer experience and retention teams, along with an ongoing commitment to collaboration and handoffs across the entire customer lifecycle.
Successful fintech CMOs are meeting these challenges through a data-driven, growth-oriented approach that resonates with their C-suite peers. By consistently demonstrating their impact on customer experience, retention and revenue, they’ve reshaped marketing’s perception from a supporting function to a core strategic driver.
3) Fintech CMOs are charting a future path from CMO to CEO
One of the most compelling insights from this year’s study is the emerging trajectory of fintech CMOs to CEOs. This is in contrast to what we have seen in the past, where most CEOs have historically come from operations or finance backgrounds. We are now seeing this being challenged in the fintech space—driven by the CMOs’ expanded strategic influence and measurable impact on growth.
Today more than ever, CMOs are uniquely positioned for top leadership because of their deep knowledge of their customers, competitors, and market dynamics, combined with their cross-functional leadership experience.
However, CMOs acknowledge that this transition won’t happen overnight. Entrenched beliefs about traditional CEO backgrounds persist. To break through, CMOs must continue demonstrating enterprise-wide impact while communicating in the financial and strategic language that resonates with the rest of the C-Suite. Building stronger alliances with CFOs, CROs and COOs, embracing continuous learning, and seeking cross-functional leadership experiences that broaden their organizational reach will be essential to expanding their strategic influence.
The new era of fintech CMOs
The fintech CMO role has evolved beyond its traditional boundaries, emerging as a strategic function that drives organizational growth. As their influence expands across brand value, customer experience, and revenue generation, these CMOs are not just reshaping perceptions of marketing—they’re redefining what marketing leadership looks like in the fintech sector and positioning themselves to become future CEOs.
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