The acquisition efficiency gains your performance marketing team is reporting are real. I am not questioning the numbers. I am questioning whether efficiency is the right objective for a commercial system in financial services that needs to be building financial relationships rather than processing account openings.
Efficiency in acquisition optimises for the lowest cost per completed onboarding. It does not optimise for the customer with the highest lifetime value. In financial services those objectives are often in direct tension because the highest lifetime value customer is not the one most easily acquired at the lowest cost on a performance channel.
A system optimised for acquisition efficiency will outperform a system optimised for relationship quality on the metrics reviewed monthly. And it will underperform it on the metrics that determine whether the business is genuinely building commercial value over time. The CFO who can hold both timeframes simultaneously is governing in a way the monthly dashboard does not support.
Related reading