Targeting The LGBT Community In The Financial Service Sector

As societal attitudes towards the LGBT community have changed, so too have financial marketers approach to this lucrative target market.

Sometime in the mid 90s, retail banks and credit unions started to look at the market for gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender individuals (more commonly referred to as the “LGBT market”). As societal anxieties towards the LGBT community eased, so did financial marketers’ concerns about possibly targeting this audience.

It’s not a small, insignificant market either. Today, at least 8 million adults in the U.S. identify themselves as gay, lesbian, or bisexual, according to a study by the Williams Institute. Combined with 700,000 or so transgender Americans, that means nearly 4% of the U.S. population is LGBT. The research showed that slightly more people identify themselves as bisexual (1.8%) than as lesbian or gay (1.7%), and women are more likely than men to identify as bisexual.

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