Financial promotions
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The standard of financial promotions is a priority element of the FSA's retail market strategy and our work in this area is part of our overarching Treating Customers Fairly initiative.
Updates & additions
October 2009
Read the findings of our thematic review of structured deposits
September 2009
Read the findings of our review of spread betting promotions
Key issues for firms to avoid
Misleading headline claims, small print, key risks not prominent enough, insufficient product information, unrealistic impressions of the product, cherry-picked or too-prominent past performance data, misleading savings claims, anything which might create an unrealistic expectation on the part of the consumer.
So promotions must be balanced, clear and not misleading.
Key issues for firms to avoid
Industry Updates
Read our latest industry update on "Insurance Pricing claims" as part of our series focusing on issues or trends that we identify through our routine monitoring of financial promotions compliance.
Insurance pricing update [PDF]
COBS - 15 months on
Read our examples of good and bad practice in financial promotions and the appropriateness test which we uncovered in our 'post-implementation review' work on COBS4 and COBS10.
Real life cases
Examples of our financial promotions casework
As part of our Discussion Paper on Transparency as a Regulatory Tool (DP08/3) we committed to improving the educational resources that we make available to firms.
We have published examples, based on real life cases, to show how we have acted to ensure that firms comply with the financial promotions rules in COBS4, MCOB3 and ICOBS2.2.
We will update these examples to capture emerging concerns and, where necessary, to clarify our expectations of firms.
Read our real life cases.
Mortgages and secured loans
Essential reading if you advertise:
-
FSA-regulated mortgage contracts; or
- other secured lending, where the lender has our permission to offer regulated mortgage contracts.
So this could include buy-to-let mortgages and
second or subsequent charges (for example, to consolidate credit/store card debts) etc.
Together, these are known as qualifying credit.
We regulate all adverts for qualifying credit, even if the advertiser only has a consumer credit licence from the Office of Fair Trading.