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A quarterly read on outbound into banks, insurers, lenders, payments firms and fintechs, from our own data: how strictly 478 ranked financial-services companies protect their own email, who replies to cold email in finance, and what agencies publish as their price. Edition Q4 2026, published 31 October 2026. Next update 5 January 2027.
Short answer: As of Q4 2026, 46.7% of 478 ranked fintech and financial-services companies set DMARC to p=reject, and 16.5% (79 companies) do not enforce DMARC at all. Insurtech is the segment furthest behind, at 25.6% not enforcing. Finance, fintech and investment firms were 5.4% of the 1,543 people who replied positively to our campaigns. Published agency prices run from $99 to $750 per meeting.
I'm Moe Alhosni, founder of ROI Maximizer. We run cold email for B2B companies and charge per qualified meeting, so we gain when outbound looks worth doing, and we are one of the agencies whose prices sit in the market this index describes. Every figure below links its source and its date.
| Reading | Q4 2026 | Change since last edition | Sample |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ranked financial-services companies at DMARC p=reject | 46.7% | First edition | 478 domains, 30 October 2026 |
| Not enforcing DMARC (none, p=none or invalid) | 16.5% | First edition | 478 domains |
| Publishing MTA-STS | 8.4% | First edition | 478 domains |
| Email setup grade A | 72.4% | First edition | 478 domains |
| Finance, fintech and investment firms, share of positive repliers | 5.4% (84 people) | First edition | 1,543 people, 7 August 2025 to 24 July 2026 |
| Published price per meeting, lowest to highest | $99 to $750 | First edition | Agencies' own pages, 31 October 2026 |
On 30 October 2026 we read the public email records of 478 fintech and financial-services companies from four rankings: CNBC/Statista's World's Top Fintech Companies 2025 and UK's Top Fintech Companies 2025, the Forbes Fintech 50 2026 and Forbes Middle East's Fintech 50 2026. The full study, with its method, is the fintech email security benchmark.
| Measure, all 478 companies | Share |
|---|---|
| DMARC record published | 97.5% |
| DMARC p=reject | 46.7% |
| DMARC p=quarantine | 36.8% |
| DMARC p=none | 14% |
| Not enforcing (no DMARC, p=none or invalid) | 16.5% |
| DKIM key found on 10 common selectors (a lower bound) | 96.4% |
| SPF over 10 DNS lookups | 4.8% |
| MTA-STS published | 8.4% |
| BIMI published | 27.6% |
| Grade A on our email setup checker | 72.4% |
| Segment | n | DMARC p=reject | Not enforcing | MTA-STS | Grade A |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Payments | 131 | 41.2% | 18.3% | 6.1% | 71.8% |
| Lending and alternative finance | 71 | 39.4% | 25.4% | 7% | 63.4% |
| Wealth, investing and trading | 73 | 47.9% | 12.3% | 12.3% | 78.1% |
| Insurtech | 43 | 34.9% | 25.6% | 9.3% | 60.5% |
| Enterprise fintech (regtech, data, banking infra, finance software) | 80 | 52.5% | 11.3% | 10% | 71.3% |
| Digital banks and banking-as-a-service | 48 | 62.5% | 12.5% | 6.3% | 79.2% |
| Crypto and digital assets | 32 | 59.4% | 6.3% | 9.4% | 90.6% |
Insurtech is the segment with the most companies not enforcing DMARC, at 25.6%; crypto and digital assets has the fewest, at 6.3%.
| Region | n | DMARC p=reject | Not enforcing | MTA-STS | Grade A |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United States | 158 | 52.5% | 13.3% | 10.1% | 77.8% |
| United Kingdom | 147 | 46.3% | 12.9% | 9.5% | 73.5% |
| EU, EEA and Switzerland | 42 | 45.2% | 16.7% | 7.1% | 73.8% |
| Middle East and North Africa | 52 | 30.8% | 36.5% | 5.8% | 51.9% |
| Asia-Pacific | 50 | 42% | 16% | 6% | 70% |
| Canada, Latin America and Africa | 29 | 55.2% | 17.2% | 3.4% | 75.9% |
Middle East and North Africa is the region with the most companies not enforcing, at 36.5%.
What it means if you sell to these firms. Their mail runs mostly through Google (56.1% of the companies) and Microsoft (25.9%), and both check incoming mail against SPF, DKIM and DMARC, so your own sending domain has to pass all three before a cold email lands. Check yours with the email setup checker and the SPF lookup counter. And if you sell email security, identity or fraud tools, the not-enforcing share is a list of firms with a visible gap.
Between 7 August 2025 and 24 July 2026, 1,543 unique people replied positively to campaigns we ran for clients and for ourselves. By the sector they work in:
| Recipient sector | People | Share of all positive repliers |
|---|---|---|
| Finance, fintech and investment firms | 84 | 5.4% |
| Web3 and crypto startups | 123 | 8% |
| All sectors | 1,543 | 100% |
These are shares of people, not reply rates. They follow how much was sent to each sector, and the export they come from holds no send counts, so they cannot say whether finance replies more or less than other sectors. The full breakdown is in cold email reply rates by industry. We have not run a campaign for a finance client yet, so none of this is a finance client result.
Published per-meeting prices run from $99 (ScaliQ: $99–$499 per attended meeting, no setup or retainer) to $750 (Belkins: from $750 per meeting). Our own is $200–$500 per qualified meeting that took place, plus a $1,000–$3,000 setup, or a flat $5,000 a month. Retainers aimed at fintech, as published:
| Agency | Published price |
|---|---|
| Danish Lead Co | From $3,000 a month |
| LeadHaste | $4,500 a month, plus $1,000 setup |
| Belkins (fintech starter) | From $5,000 a month, 3-month pilot |
| SalesRoads | $11,950 per 4 weeks for one SDR |
Prices were read on each firm's own page and re-checked on 31 October 2026. The order form is the price. Every agency, with terms and what each bills, is in fintech lead generation agencies compared and State of B2B outbound 2027. To turn a price into a cost per meeting for your own deals, use the financial services cost per meeting calculator.
| Section | Source | Sample | Date | Unit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Inbox readiness | DNS-over-HTTPS lookups of each company's main web domain: MX, SPF, DMARC, DKIM (10 common selectors), BIMI, MTA-STS | 478 companies from four public rankings; groups under 20 suppressed | 30 October 2026 | Percent of domains |
| Who replies | Our Instantly inbox export: unique people who replied positively, by recipient sector | 1,543 people; sectors under 30 people folded into "Other" | 7 August 2025 to 24 July 2026 | Percent of people |
| Prices | Each agency's own pricing page | 6 published prices | 31 October 2026 | As published |
Download the aggregates: Financial Services Outbound Index data (CSV). Free to reuse under CC BY 4.0. Cite as: "Financial Services Outbound Index, Q4 2026, ROI Maximizer, https://roimaxi.com/research/financial-services-outbound-index".
The next edition is due on 5 January 2027, with the same company list re-checked and the change against this one.
83.5% of 478 ranked fintech and financial-services companies enforce it, at p=quarantine or p=reject, as of 30 October 2026. 46.7% use p=reject, the strictest policy, and 16.5% have no DMARC record, p=none or an invalid record.
Our data cannot give a finance reply rate yet: it has no send counts for finance recipients. What it shows is that finance, fintech and investment firms were 5.4% of 1,543 people who replied positively to our campaigns, and that most ranked finance firms receive mail through Google or Microsoft, which check every sender's SPF, DKIM and DMARC, so a sender's own setup has to be right.
Every quarter, in the first week of January, April, July and October. The next edition is due on 5 January 2027.
ROI Maximizer is a trading name of M Ventures LTD, registered in England and Wales, company no. 15554493. Registered office: 4 Beau Street, Bath BA1 1QY, United Kingdom. moe@roimaxi.com
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