In this episode of the Financial Marketing Insights podcast, we spoke with Matt Farnham, Head of Marketing & Engagement at Heartland Bank Australia, about building a marketing function from the ground up, reshaping perceptions in a specialist category, and navigating the tension between human insight and AI‑driven scale.

Matt joined Heartland Bank in September 2025, bringing more than 15 years of banking experience - including a decade in financial‑services marketing - across major banks, customer‑owned institutions, and non‑bank lenders. His career began working as a teller and progressing through every branch role before moving into head‑office marketing.

“When I was in those frontline teams, the things that you would see and you would learn about your customers were absolute gold.”

That early exposure to customer realities continues to shape how he approaches brand, insight, and storytelling today.

A Specialist Bank in a Specialist Category

Heartland Bank Australia is the country’s leading provider of reverse mortgages - known in some markets as equity release, a type of lending that allows homeowners to access a portion of their home’s value without selling it.

“Reverse mortgages in Australia is a much smaller market… there’s only about $5.5 billion of equity released.”

Because the category is still emerging in Australia, many customers approach it with limited understanding. That makes education central to how Heartland communicates - and central to how Matt thinks about brand.

Turning Someday Into Today

Heartland’s most ambitious brand initiative to date is Turn Someday Into Today, a campaign designed to reshape how Australians perceive reverse mortgages.

“Our most recent campaign was just announced as a finalist [for the Marketing Excellence Awards]… as of today, it’s very much my favourite project.”

The campaign was built on a powerful insight: customers were using reverse mortgages to improve their quality of life - upgrading homes, replacing ageing cars, travelling with family, or easing cost‑of‑living pressures.

“People weren’t borrowing for frivolous things… 45% of customers are using a reverse mortgage to do renovations on their house.”

That statistic became a hero element of the campaign, helping to reframe reverse mortgages from a product of last resort to a financial tool that unlocks long‑imagined goals. The campaign had to educate, inspire curiosity, and invite Australians to reconsider what the product could mean for them - not just today, but years into the future.

Building a Marketing Function from the Ground Up

When Matt joined Heartland Bank Australia, there was no local marketing function. His role was to build one - and to define how a specialist bank should communicate in a category that requires both clarity and care.

“Half your day is spent in now and this month’s KPIs, and the other half is in next year’s KPIs.”

He describes the role as a constant balancing act: blending short‑term demand generation with long‑term brand building, and ensuring both reinforce each other. That means:

• Creating campaigns that spark immediate curiosity

• Building brand assets that compound over time

• Designing journeys that work for customers at different life stages

• Establishing metrics that capture both present impact and future value

For Matt, success is measured not only in leads or search volumes, but in whether the brand is shaping understanding - and whether customers feel confident enough to explore a product they may have previously dismissed.

AI, Trust, and the Risk of Overuse

A recent YouGov study caught Matt’s attention: younger audiences - often assumed to be the most tech‑forward - are becoming more sceptical of content they believe was created with AI.

For Matt, that insight reinforces a simple principle: AI is useful, but only when applied with care. It can speed up production, support ideation, and help scale content - but it cannot replace human judgement.

“If I can tell you’ve used AI, you should do it again… I start to question, did you fact check it? Did you put a human lens over this.”

He also notes the emerging ESG conversation around AI’s energy consumption - a reminder that innovation and sustainability will increasingly need to coexist.

Keeping the Human Voice at the Centre

Despite the rise of automation, Matt’s creative process remains deeply human. He’s intentional about finding inspiration beyond the familiar patterns of financial‑services marketing, drawing on ideas from other industries to keep Heartland’s storytelling fresh and relatable.

He also listens obsessively to customers: call recordings, surveys, focus groups, frontline feedback. Those raw, unfiltered moments often spark the strongest ideas.

“Even if it’s just something someone said in a survey… it sparks that idea that goes, hang on, that’s a story to tell.”

It’s a discipline rooted in his early career - staying close to the customer, even as his role becomes more strategic.

A Human‑Centred Approach

Financial services is full of complex, emotionally charged products that demand careful, human‑centred storytelling - and Heartland’s work in the reverse‑mortgage space is one example of how that understanding can reshape a category.

Matt Farnham’s approach - grounded in customer insight, strategic reframing, and thoughtful use of technology - shows how modern marketers can build trust in markets where understanding is still taking shape. Modern marketing, in his view, is at its strongest when it blends purpose with empathy: when brands commit to telling clearer, more human stories, even as the tools around them evolve at extraordinary speed.