FOREX NOT BOREX HELEN ASTANIOU Chief Marketing Officer at TIO Markets
Those well acquainted with the forex industry will have heard the term Borex before.
MYTH #1: The 100-line mandatory risk warning kills creativity.
Borex. Cannot be found on the countless forex glossary pages that pollute the web and whose sole purpose is to ram any given website with keywords rather than to adequately educate and inform clientele.
Not necessarily. Working in forex over the years has come to be connected with ritual, rite and rope, rather than with innovation and creativity. With the clamping down of financial regulators in the sector – as quite rightly, they should – it has become inevitable that innovation has been somewhat dampened.
Borex in British. (ˈbɒ-rɛks, ˈbɒ-rɛɡz) Uncountable noun. 1. Abbreviation for “Boring Forex” 2. Descriptive word for demotivating, uninspiring work environments in financial services If you’ve not heard that term, perhaps you’ve actively participated in a conversation like this at an industry networking event: Person 1: Where do you work? Person 2: I’ve been working in FX company x for x years Person 1: Oh, how nice. *Yawn* This article promotes my view on why forex is not borex, via three myth-busting concepts.
What do I mean by this? It’s a marketer’s job to promote exciting messaging that is most likely to convert a viewer into a potential client. A three-line risk warning (on a banner not bigger than the size of your thumb), clearly stipulating that 110% of people have lost their investment trading with your brokerage, therefore isn’t the most attractive message. Attractive, no. Necessary, yes. With today’s regulatory restrictions on marketing specifically in the sphere of financial services, marketing teams are heavily challenged to market in an incredibly saturated industry, but in an ethical, transparent and responsible manner. Marketeers bear a responsibility to the consumers of their financial products. We are responsible for informing them of the risks and for educating clients on how to use such products safely. My favourite approach to marketing responsibly, given I’m overly eager not to sell false dreams, is to go down the road of authen-
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