June 17, 2026
What's at risk from a poorly localised financial website
Localising a financial website is not simply a linguistic project. For banks, asset managers, fintechs and investment firms, multilingual websites have to meet industry regulations, maintain investor trust, comply with accessibility law and rank in local search engines. A poorly localised website can create compliance risks, damage credibility, reduce online visibility and undermine client acquisition. This guide sets out the risks financial organisations face when adapting their digital content for new markets and how to avoid them.
Literal translations that aren’t properly localised often sound unnatural and may not correctly express the brand voice. Incorrect or inconsistent terminology and style across the website can also look careless, and this negatively impacts consumer trust in an organisation. For example, audiences in certain European markets, such as Spain and Italy, may question a financial institution’s credibility if it displays “€10,000” instead of “10.000 €”.
Research backs this up, too. A survey by leading insights specialists, CSA Research, found that 76% of customers prefer to acquire products and services with information in their native language and that buyers inherently distrust financial websites and legal documents they cannot read fluently.
Financial marketing is regulated content. Under the EU’s MiFID II and the FCA’s COBS 4.2 (UK), marketing communications and financial promotions must be fair, clear and not misleading in the specific market you publish in. This is where a literal translation can be a risk for compliance. Some products, such as “assurance vie” in France, have no exact equivalents in different markets, so poorly translated websites may be considered unclear.
MiFID II also expects risk warnings to appear in the same language as the rest of the communication, so a disclosure left in English (or poorly translated) goes against regulations. A literal translation of an approved disclaimer in the source market is not automatically approved in the target market.
Online search behaviour, phrasing and intent vary from market to market. Simply translating queries and keywords without redoing the research for the target audience risks your products and services being invisible in search engines.
For example, while a UK saver would search for “high yield savings account”, a German saver wouldn’t search for “Hochzinssparkonto” (the literal translation) as there is no close equivalent term. Instead, local users would look for “Tagesgeldkonto” or “Festgeldkonto”. A literal translation means you could be targeting keywords nobody searches for.
There’s also the technical side of translating for SEO. Publishing raw machine translation can fall foul of Google’s spam policies, which list automated translation without human review as scaled content abuse. This can lead to websites being deindexed. AI search engines, like ChatGPT and Perplexity, typically only cite clear and easy-to-read sources, too.Â
For consumer-facing financial services in the EU, accessibility is a legal requirement which applies to every language version of your site. The European Accessibility Act (Directive (EU) 2019/882) came into effect in 2025 and requires consumer-facing financial services, including online banking and investor platforms, to be accessible for users with disabilities. It references WCAG 2.1 level AA, the international web accessibility standard.
Compliance in one language doesn’t make you compliant in another. A localised website needs its own alt text, captioned video, tagged PDFs and accessibility statement in the relevant language. Accessibility has to be maintained as your content changes, too — it’s an ongoing obligation rather than a one-time project.
When planning a localisation project for a financial website, these are just some of the steps to take to mitigate the risks.
Peter & Clark has been creating, localising and governing digital content safely and credibly in the financial sector since 1998. We help banks, asset managers, fintechs, financial institutions and investment firms grow in new markets while minimising compliance and regulatory risks.
Our tailored solutions adapt to your specific needs and bring the end-to-end expertise any financial website localisation project requires, including:
Translation converts text from one language into another, while localization adapts the content for a specific market. This covers things like editing the copy to sound more natural or checking for compliance with local accessibility and financial marketing regulations, so the content feels natural and credible to local users. .Â
The cost of localizing a financial website depends on several factors, including the number of languages, volume of content, regulatory review requirements, SEO localization and multimedia adaptation needs. The type of content and level of specialization required are also key in determining the most suitable translation and localization approach.
Every project is different, so we assess your specific requirements before recommending a solution. Our aim is to help you reduce unnecessary costs while maintaining the accuracy, consistency and compliance standards required for financial content.
The main risks are loss of trust in the brand, breaching regulations that govern the marketing of financial products and services, limited visibility in local search engines, and failure to meet accessibility law.Â
Discover how we help investment managers and private banks communicate clearly, comply with regulations, and engage clients effectively. Each case study highlights the challenges, our approach, and the results achieved.
August 3, 2026
Translating multilingual content for investment management, banking, insurers, and other financial institutions carries significant brand & compliance risk. The task goes beyond a simple word-for-word translation and requires everything from auditable workflows to data security and compliance with different regulations.
