Why Finance and Media Are Moving Closer Together

The real shift is not that financial firms are producing information. It is that information, trust, and the customer relationship around financial decisions are increasingly being treated as economic functions in their own right.

What Is New Is Not Information Dissemination Itself

Finance and media seem to be moving closer together again. But the forms this convergence is taking vary considerably.

In Japan, SBI Group announced on September 17, 2026, that it had entered into a basic agreement concerning the acquisition of all shares of livedoor Co., Ltd. The group described a vision for building a “neo-media ecosystem” combining financial functions and customer touchpoints with digital technology, content, and content production and distribution capabilities. The following day, SBI Group also launched mynt, an economic and information media service covering not only finance and economics but also education, careers, marriage, child-rearing, asset building, and other aspects of consumers’ “future planning.”

Matsui Securities offers another interesting example in Japan. It produces and distributes its own investment information through Money Satellite and video content, and in August 2026 its main YouTube channel surpassed one million subscribers. Matsui Securities itself positions this content as part of building a strong brand, explaining that its videos have helped more people become familiar with the company and interested in investing.

Outside Japan, Robinhood owns Sherwood Media, an editorial media business. Bringing a media company into a financial group, developing in-house content capabilities, and owning an editorial media subsidiary are different models. What they appear to share, however, is a recognition that economic value can exist not only in the provision of financial products and services themselves, but also in information and in the broader relationship with consumers.

Of course, banks, securities firms, and other financial institutions have long produced information. Securities research, bank economic reports, and investment seminars all predate the current wave of interest in media. Finance and media have not suddenly discovered each other.

The current trend can also be understood as a customer acquisition strategy: expand consumer touchpoints through media and ultimately connect them to account openings, purchases of financial products, or other uses of the firm’s services. That is undoubtedly one important reason financial firms become involved in media.

What feels different to me is that information is no longer being treated merely as a supporting function for selling financial products. It is increasingly being treated as an economic function in its own right—one that can influence the formation of customer relationships, subsequent transactions, and continued use of financial services, and therefore one to which management resources may be allocated deliberately.

If we look at the decision-making process that eventually leads to a financial transaction, the actual purchase of a financial product or use of a financial service comes quite far downstream. Before someone buys an investment trust, takes out a mortgage, or purchases insurance, there is usually an earlier stage: “How should I prepare for retirement?” “Should I buy a home?” “How should I fund my children’s education?” Then comes information gathering, followed by comparison of alternatives.

The fact that mynt addresses education, careers, and everyday life under the broader concept of “future planning,” rather than focusing only on financial products, seems symbolic of this shift. The potential value of media to a financial firm may lie not only in providing a place to advertise finished products, but in participating in the information environment that exists before consumers ever reach the “product shelf”—the stage at which they decide what questions to ask, what information to seek, and which alternatives to compare.

This does not mean that the value of financial products themselves is diminishing. There will clearly remain areas—such as less standardized investment products and insurance—where product design, investment judgment, and financial functionality create substantial value.

At the same time, as digitalization progresses, it may become harder to sustain differentiation based solely on standardized financial services such as accounts, payments, and trade execution, or on financial products that consumers can readily compare. If product explanation, information provision, sales, and customer relationships—functions once vertically integrated within branches and individual sales representatives—continue to become unbundled, competition will extend both before and after the product itself.

The information function that helps people recognize problems, search for information, and compare alternatives may be one of the most important competitive layers emerging on the “before” side of the product.

Look Beyond the Media P&L to the Economics of the Customer Relationship

Seen this way, it may not be sufficient for a financial firm to evaluate the economic value of media solely through the standalone P&L of the media business.

Direct revenue from advertising or subscriptions matters. But if a continuous flow of information also contributes to acquiring new customers, maintaining relationships with existing customers, or extending a relationship from one service to another, it may affect the longer-term economics of each customer on the financial side as well.

At the same time, content production requires talent and fixed costs. In many cases, advertising through external media or partnering with third parties may be more rational. The point is not that bringing media production in-house will necessarily reduce customer acquisition costs. Rather, information production and ongoing customer touchpoints are increasingly becoming part of the economic design that spans customer acquisition through long-term relationship development.

A consumer who has no immediate need for a financial transaction today may need financial services in the future when buying a home, receiving an inheritance, or beginning to build assets. A continuing information relationship therefore has a form of option value: when a future financial need becomes concrete, the existing relationship may become relevant.

But in finance, attention alone is not enough. Investment products and insurance are difficult to evaluate fully at the point of purchase, and their eventual outcomes may depend on time and market conditions. That may make trust in who is providing the information economically more important in finance than in many other consumer decisions.

What may be scarce in finance is not simply scale measured by page views or video views. It is a trusted decision-making touchpoint: a relationship in which people feel that the information they receive can legitimately inform decisions that matter to them.

Buying a media business with a large audience does not automatically cause a financial business to grow. Nor is it always rational for a financial firm to own media itself. Even when a company such as Matsui Securities produces its own content, it does not own the distribution platform itself, such as YouTube. Producing information and controlling its distribution are not the same thing.

The management question, then, is not simply, “Should a financial firm own media?” It is which functions—information production, editing, distribution, and customer relationship management—should be owned internally, and which should be handled in partnership with external parties.

The Closer Finance and Media Become, the More Important Boundaries Become

As finance and media move closer economically, another question emerges.

Clearly identified corporate media, such as content produced directly by Matsui Securities, is not the same as an editorial media organization such as Sherwood. The transparency and conflict-management arrangements appropriate to each are therefore different.

Sherwood is a subsidiary of Robinhood, but its published editorial standards state that its editorial team operates independently from Robinhood, covers both Robinhood and its competitors when considered newsworthy, and discloses the relationship between Sherwood and Robinhood within relevant reporting.

In other words, finance and media may sit within the same corporate group while deliberate internal boundaries are maintained to protect trust in the information itself.

I do not think this is merely a compliance issue. If the scarce asset a financial firm hopes to create through information is a trusted decision-making touchpoint, carelessly mixing sales incentives into that relationship can destroy the very economic value the firm has been trying to build—even before considering the regulatory implications.

Conversely, where content is clearly identified as corporate communication and both the publisher and its purpose are transparent, it would not necessarily make sense to demand exactly the same editorial independence expected of a news organization.

The objective is neither to integrate everything nor to separate everything. The challenge is to design the connections and boundaries among information production, editing, advertising, product recommendations, sales, and solicitation according to the purpose, incentives, and responsibilities associated with each function.

When people discuss the convergence of finance and media, attention naturally tends to focus on how far the two can be integrated. But if competition is extending into the information environment that exists before consumers ever reach the financial “product shelf,” the more important questions may be different: Who earns trust in that environment? What should be connected? And what should deliberately remain separate?

And financial institutions and established media companies are not the only participants entering this space. On social media, individual creators increasingly influence how investors identify issues and form their set of choices.

How far is information provision simply “media,” and at what point does it become product recommendation or solicitation, carrying a different set of responsibilities? In the next edition of JAMP Perspective, I would like to examine that boundary through the growing role of so-called financial influencers, or “finfluencers.”

Author: Keiichi Ohara, President & CEO, JAMP Corporation
About This Article
This article is an adapted English edition of JAMP Perspective No. 352, originally written in Japanese by Keiichi Ohara and distributed on September 30. It has been edited and supplemented where necessary to make the discussion and its Japan-specific context clearer to readers outside Japan. It is therefore not a direct translation of the original Japanese newsletter.

This article is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice or a recommendation regarding any financial product.