The offsite slide has two arrows drawn across it. The vertical one runs from Traditional to Innovative, the horizontal one from Mass to Premium, and nine of the eleven competitor logos sit in the top-right box with yours. The room agrees the chart is accurate, then nobody can say what to do with it. A brand positioning map that puts every rival in one corner has measured the wrong two things.
What is a brand positioning map, and what is it for?
A brand positioning map, often called a perceptual map, is a chart with two axes that shows where buyers place competing brands on the two attributes that most shape their choice. Each axis is a spectrum with two ends. Its job is to find a position you can own and defend. Describing the market is a by-product.
For a regulated brand it has a second job. The map decides which claims the brand will repeat for years, so it also decides which claims your compliance reviewer will read for years, and how much compliance time each campaign will need. A position drawn in a strategy room ends up as headline copy, app-store text and the line under the logo. Each of those goes through review before it runs.
The map is not the positioning statement. The statement says who you serve, what you promise and why they should believe you. A brand positioning map shows whether anyone else already makes that promise, and whether the space you want is empty or crowded. In our brand strategy work the brand positioning map is a check on the statement, run before any naming or design starts.
Why do fintech positioning maps all look the same?
Most fintech maps use the same pair of axes: trust against innovation, or traditional against digital. Those axes fail because buyers expect both. Nobody in India picks a savings account because the bank feels untrustworthy, and nobody picks a lending app because its screens are clunky. When the axes describe hygiene, every brand drifts to the top right.
Regulation narrows the open space further. Every mutual fund advertisement in India carries the same standard warning. Every regulated lender gives retail borrowers a Key Facts Statement in a set format before the loan contract is signed. Every insurer’s advertisement has to show its registered name. These rules protect buyers, and they make the mandatory parts of every ad in a sector look alike. The distinguishing work has to happen in the part the rules leave open, and a map that ignores the fixed parts will point you at space you cannot use.
Copying does the rest. Teams build the map by reading rival homepages, and those homepages were written by reading each other. The chart then records a category’s habits and labels them customer perception. The fix is to place every brand from what buyers say and what products do, which the template below forces you to do.
The brand positioning map template, field by field
Fill the table in order. Each row carries a hypothetical example from an imaginary personal-loan app run by a non-banking financial company (NBFC), so you can see the level of detail that works. Skip a row and the brand positioning map that comes out of it is a guess.
| Field | What to write | Hypothetical example |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Category frame | The choice the buyer is making, in the buyer’s words | Which app do I borrow ₹50,000 from for my sister’s wedding? |
| 2. Buyer and moment | One buyer type and the moment of choice | Salaried first-time borrower comparing two apps on a phone late at night |
| 3. Rival set | Six to ten options the buyer considers, including the non-obvious ones | Two bank apps, three NBFC apps, a loan on an existing credit card, borrowing from family |
| 4. Axis X | An attribute buyers name without prompting | How early I see the full amount I will repay |
| 5. Axis Y | A second attribute that moves independently of X | How much I have to read to understand the terms |
| 6. Evidence per placement | The source behind each dot | Each rival’s loan flow recorded on a test phone, plus its published fee page |
| 7. Target position | The spot you will claim and the empty space it sits in | Full cost shown early, terms short |
| 8. Proof on screen | The screen or document that proves the claim | Total repayment shown before e-sign, matching the Key Facts Statement |
| 9. Regulator check | The rule that touches the claim, named generically | RBI’s rules on the Key Facts Statement, now consolidated in its Master Directions |
| 10. Owner and review date | Who keeps the map current, and when it is next checked | Brand head, reviewed every quarter and after any rival relaunch |
Two rows matter more than the rest. Row 6 stops opinion from posing as research: if a dot has no source, it comes off the map. Row 8 stops the strategy from promising something the product does not do. A target position with no proof screen is a wish.
Once the table is full, write the position as one sentence with this formula:
For (buyer) at (moment), we are the (X position) and (Y position) choice, and (proof screen) shows it.
If the sentence sounds like every rival’s tagline, go back to rows 4 and 5.
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How do you choose two axes worth plotting?
Start with a long list of candidate attributes, then cut it with five tests, in this order. An axis that fails any test goes.
- Buyer words. The axis uses words a buyer would use in a complaint or an app-store review. “Transparent” fails. “I knew the total before I signed” passes.
- Spread. Rivals sit at different points on it today. If every brand scores the same, the axis is hygiene and belongs in the brief as a minimum standard.
- Independence. A move on X does not force a move on Y. Price and premium feel usually move together, so plotting both wastes an axis.
- Proof. You can show the claim on a screen, in a document or in a process the buyer can see for themselves.
- Survives review. The claim can be stated in an advertisement under the rules for your sector, and your compliance team agrees. The next section covers what that means for funds, insurers and lenders.
Then score each surviving fintech axis from 0 to 2 on each test, for a total out of 10. Keep the two highest scorers that are independent of each other. Scoring moves the argument from taste to evidence, which is where you want it before the creative team starts.
The table below shows axes we see often in fintech workshops, the stronger version of each, and why the stronger one holds up.
| Weak axis | Stronger axis | Why it holds |
|---|---|---|
| Trusted vs innovative (any fintech) | How early the full cost appears vs how much the buyer must read | Buyers name both, rivals differ, and both can be checked on a test phone |
| Digital vs traditional (insurer) | Claims handled in the app vs claims with a named person to call | Every insurer has an app; service models at claim time differ a lot |
| High returns vs low risk (fund house) | Few schemes explained simply vs a wide shelf for advised investors | Return claims cannot be the position in an ad; the size of the scheme range is a fact |
| Big vs small (B2B fintech) | Bought by the finance head vs bought by the engineering team | It changes the sales motion, the proof and the content |
| Premium vs mass (credit card) | Rewards you manage vs rewards that apply themselves | Card features are published, so placements can be checked |
The B2B row deserves its own map. If your buyer is a company, the person who signs is rarely the person who uses the product, and the axes change with that. Our piece on positioning a B2B fintech for the CFO works through that case.
Which positioning axes break under SEBI, IRDAI and RBI rules?
Some fintech axes look strong on a whiteboard and cannot appear in an ad. Check this before the offsite ends, because the creative team will build on whatever the brand positioning map says. This is general guidance, not legal advice; your compliance team decides.
Mutual funds. The advertisement code in SEBI’s Mutual Funds Regulations bars rankings based on any criteria and unfair comparisons, and it rules out slogans that are inconsistent with the product’s risk and return profile. An axis like “top performer” can sit on an internal chart. It cannot become the line under the logo. The decision we make for fund houses: plot on things the code leaves open, such as how simply the range is explained, and design the standard warning into the layout from the first frame.
That warning has a timing cost. In audio-visual ads the warning has to be shown and voiced clearly, and SEBI’s code gives five seconds as its example of a clear reading, so in a 15-second spot it can take a third of the running time. A position that needs a long explanation will not fit in the ten seconds left. Pick an axis you can say in one line.
Insurers. IRDAI’s 2024 regulations on protecting policyholders’ interests require an insurer’s advertisement to show its registered name prominently with its trade name or logo. Advertisements issued through distribution channels need the insurer’s written approval before they run. A challenger position built on a short trade name still has to carry the full registered name in the lockup. The decision: design the lockup with the registered name in it from the start, and add a written-approval step to every partner campaign timeline.
Lenders. RBI’s rules on the Key Facts Statement, now consolidated in its Master Directions, require retail and MSME term-loan borrowers to receive a statement that includes the annual percentage rate before the loan contract is executed. If your axis is honesty about cost, every borrower can test the claim against a number on a regulated document. The decision: claim the transparent end of a price axis only if the cost on your marketing screens matches the statement the borrower later receives.
Any comparison you publish. The ASCI Code allows comparative advertising when it is clear what is being compared, the comparison is factual, accurate and capable of substantiation, and it does not unfairly denigrate the competitor. A published 2×2 with rival logos in the weak quadrant is a comparison ad. Our rule: the brand positioning map with rival names stays internal, and the public version, if there is one, says what you do and leaves rivals off.
Gulf markets follow a similar logic. The Dubai Financial Services Authority’s rulebook asks the firms it covers that make a financial promotion in or from the Dubai International Financial Centre to take reasonable care that it is clear, fair and not misleading. A map built for India can be reused there, but the regulator check in row 9 has to be redone for each market.
How do you plot rivals without guessing?
Place each fintech rival with evidence you could show a sceptical colleague. Four sources cover most of it, and none needs a research budget.
- The rival’s product flow, recorded on a test phone from install to the first decision screen.
- Its published documents: fee pages, sample Key Facts Statements, policy wordings and scheme factsheets.
- Its app-store reviews, read for the words buyers use, which also feed the buyer-words test.
- Its current ads, collected from the public ad libraries the platforms run.
Score each rival from 0 to 4 on each axis and write the evidence next to the score. Plot the score, not the impression. When two people score the same rival more than a point apart, look at the evidence together. The gap usually means the axis definition is loose, and tightening it improves every other placement too.
Add the option the buyer uses when they choose no brand at all. For a personal loan it may be a relative. For term insurance it may be the group cover from an employer. For a mutual fund it may be a fixed deposit. That option often owns the quadrant you thought was empty, and it changes what your advertising has to beat.
A worked example: a hypothetical NBFC loan app
Take a hypothetical NBFC with a personal-loan app, eight rivals on the buyer’s shortlist and a brand that looks like all of them. Its first map used speed against trust, and seven of the nine dots landed top right. The team learned nothing from it.
The team rebuilt the axes from app-store reviews of all nine apps. Two complaints came up again and again: borrowers did not know the full cost until late in the flow, and they did not understand what they were signing. That gave two new axes. One measured how early the full repayment appears; the other measured how much the borrower has to read to understand the terms.
Replotted, the rivals spread out. The bank apps showed the cost early but carried long terms. Several app-first lenders kept the terms short but showed the full cost only near e-sign. The quadrant for full cost early with short terms was empty.
The lesson sits in why it was empty. Showing the full cost early means the pricing engine has to run before the borrower finishes the form, which is a product change with its own budget. The map was right, and the brand team could claim the position only after product and compliance agreed to build and approve that screen. Until then, any ad claiming it would have been a promise the app broke on the third screen.
A positioning map that finds a gap has also found a work order.
How should a new fintech and an incumbent bank use the map differently?
Stage changes what the brand positioning map is for. A newer fintech uses it to find a fight it can win. An established bank, insurer or fund house uses it to see which of its inherited strengths a challenger could copy first.
Use the map to hunt for a gap if:
- you sell one product to one buyer type,
- your product team can ship a new screen faster than your rivals can,
- you can accept being unknown to most of the market while you own one corner of it,
- your board will back a position that some buyers will dislike.
Use the map to defend and stretch if:
- you have many products and several buyer types,
- your brand already sits at the trusted end of most axes by default,
- a challenger is winning one buyer group on one attribute,
- your sub-brands are drifting into each other’s space.
An incumbent’s usual mistake is plotting itself on attributes it inherited, such as age or branch count, and calling them a position. A better question for a large brand is which attribute it would lose first if a challenger matched its strengths. Draw a separate map for each product line where that risk is real, and keep the master brand map for the corporate story.
If you plan to bring in an outside team to run the workshop, our list of fintech branding agencies in India sets out what each is known for. Ask any shortlisted agency to show you a map it built and the regulator check behind its target position.
What goes wrong with a brand positioning map, and what are the early signs?
Most failed fintech maps fail in one of five ways. Each has a sign you can spot in the first draft.
- Everyone in one corner. More than half the dots share a quadrant. Replace the axis with the least spread and replot.
- Two names for one axis. The dots form a diagonal line, which means X and Y measure the same thing. Swap one for an attribute that moves on its own.
- The wishful dot. Your own brand sits where the plan says it will be. Plot today and target as two dots, with the evidence for today’s dot written beside it.
- The map becomes the ad. Someone wants to publish the chart with rival logos on it. Keep it internal and publish only the claim and its proof.
- Nobody owns it. The chart lives in an offsite deck and is never opened again. Name an owner, set a quarterly review and redraw it when a rival relaunches.
What to tell your CFO and compliance team about the map
Both will ask about the brand positioning map before they approve the work that follows from it. Here is wording you can paste into an email.
For the CFO: “The positioning map costs a few days of the team’s time and no media spend. The money is in what it triggers. If our target position needs a new product screen, that screen goes into the product budget with its own estimate. We will judge the position by conversion from the first decision screen over the two quarters after launch, and we will stop pushing it if that number does not move.”
For compliance: “The map is internal and names competitors, and it will not be published. The target position makes one claim, and the proof is a screen you have already approved. The mandatory elements for our sector sit in the layout from the first draft. The evidence for each placement is kept in the shared folder, with dates, so you can check any dot.”
People also ask
What is the difference between a positioning map and a perceptual map?
A perceptual map plots how buyers see brands, usually from survey data. A positioning map is the same kind of chart, often built from a mix of buyer evidence and the team’s judgement, and it adds the spot you intend to claim. For a fintech brand, mark which dots come from evidence and which are estimates.
How many competitors should go on a brand positioning map?
Six to ten options is a workable range in our practice. Include the options a buyer considers, the non-obvious ones such as a credit card loan or a fixed deposit, and the choice to use no brand at all. More than that and the chart becomes hard to read.
Can a bank or fund house publish its positioning map in an ad?
It is risky. The ASCI Code requires comparisons to be factual and capable of substantiation without unfairly denigrating rivals, and SEBI’s mutual fund advertisement code bars unfair comparisons and rankings. Keep the brand positioning map with rival names internal and publish only your own claim and its proof.
How often should a fintech update its positioning map?
Review it every quarter and redraw it whenever a rival relaunches, a new regulator rule changes what can be claimed, or your own product changes the proof screen. Name one owner, usually the brand head, so the review happens.
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