This page gives an analysis and insights on the data collected from 1 January 2024 to 31 December 2024. It covers action taken against authorised firms breaching financial promotion rules and referrals and investigations into unregulated activity.
The body of text below is quoted from the FCA’s Financial promotions data 2024 publication.
Financial services are essential for everyone in the UK. Good quality marketing information helps ensure consumers get good outcomes. Unclear and misleading marketing is a big concern because financial products are complex and often long-term. Our data shows we are increasing our interventions and we continue to focus on identifying authorised and unauthorised firms and/or individuals causing consumer harm.
This data gives an overview of our work to improve and raise standards across the financial services markets. Our aim is to ensure that consumers receive information about financial promotions which is clear, fair and not misleading, helping them to make informed decisions before spending their money. It compiles the data and themes reported in our quarterly financial promotions’ publications during 2024.
In 2024 we continued our work with registered cryptoasset firms to comply with the Cryptoasset financial promotions regime and took strong action against firms that were illegally promoting cryptoassets to UK consumers. We also introduced the financial promotions approval gateway, requiring firms that want to approve financial promotions on behalf of unauthorised firms outside of their group to apply to us for approver permission. We continued to build on our work with finfluencers and took targeted action against 20 individuals who were interviewed under caution during the latter part of last year. We continue to work with social media platforms to disrupt this activity, but significant work is still needed from all social media platforms to stop illegal financial promotions.
We expect firms to pay attention to the needs of customers with characteristics of vulnerability to make sure they are treated fairly. We continue to assess firms against the Consumer Duty and have seen examples where standards are not being met across several sectors. We have seen firms communicate information to retail customers in unclear, unfair and potentially misleading ways, with some promoting products or services in a way that misleads customers about the risks involved. The Consumer Duty requires firms to put consumers at the heart of their business, produce products and services that are designed to meet customers’ needs and to provide fair value.
We expect firms to read this and take necessary steps to ensure they deliver good consumer outcomes. We will continue to intervene where we identify authorised and unauthorised firms and/or individuals causing consumer harm.
What’s included in the data
- key messages
- examples of our work on financial promotions during 2024:
- reducing and preventing serious harm
- setting and testing higher standards
- promoting competition and positive change
- information on how to report a misleading financial advert or potential scam
1. Key messages
- In 2024 we increased our interventions in response to failures in financial promotions in both authorised firms and unauthorised firms and individuals. We are still concerned about the levels of compliance with the financial promotions’ rules and will keep focusing on this area to reduce consumer harm.
- Following our interventions, for authorised firms we had 19,766 promotions amended/withdrawn.This is an increase of 97.5%, compared to 10,008 in 2023.
- We have accepted voluntary requirement requests from 18 firms and used our own initiative powers on 2 firms to restrict their ability to communicate or approve financial promotions.
- For unauthorised firms and individuals, we issued 2,240 alerts in 2024. While this is a decrease of 2% from 2,286 in 2023, the alerts remain high compared to historical levels. Our alerts continue to warn the public when they may be dealing with an unauthorised, scam or clone firm.
- We have continued our work to implement the cryptoasset financial promotions regime. We have published our findings of good and poor practice following our review of firms’ compliance. This has helped raise awareness of the rules and highlighted our work to protect people and promote a competitive, sustainable crypto sector.
- We used data and technology to increase our capacity to identify and assess around 480,000 new websites that could be providing or promoting financial services or products without our permission. This resulted in reviews of just over 3,700 websites and social media platforms and led to over 1,600 alerts to warn UK consumers about these unauthorised firms.
- We took targeted action against finfluencers who may be touting financial services products illegally. As a result, 20 finfluencers were interviewed under caution using our criminal powers and we issued 38 alerts against finfluencer social media accounts that may contain unlawful promotions. There is still a lot of work to be done by all social media platforms. We want to see platforms take stronger action to proactively identify and stop illegal promotions being pushed on consumers.
2. Our work
Trends and themes identified and action taken
Our work with Claims Management Companies (CMCs)
As highlighted throughout our 2024 quarterly publications, we have seen an increase in activity with CMC firms – this is widespread across both authorised and unauthorised firms.
In 2024, our engagement with 46 authorised CMCs resulted in 9,197 financial promotions being amended/withdrawn (46% of the 19,766 total). Some of the most common breaches involved CMCs who offered their services for housing disrepair or motor finance claims. The consumers being targeted by housing disrepair claim promotions may display characteristics of vulnerability. The Consumer Duty requires firms to pay attention to the needs of customers with these characteristics to make sure they treat them fairly. With the motor finance claims, it is important that firms are ensuring consumers are made aware of the current situation on motor finance complaints.
We have also seen unauthorised firms use social media to promote housing disrepair claims. Consumers are then referred to other fee-charging firms without setting out the free options available to them. Seeking out consumers in this way is a regulated activity. We are concerned that some of these firms also promote debt management services, looking to capitalise on the cost of living crisis. We continue to focus our work to disrupt these activities, including seeking to remove unlawful financial promotions.
In 2025 we will continue to monitor this sector closely and take action where appropriate.
Our work with firms offering debt advice and debt solutions
We are still working actively with firms promoting and advertising debt advice and solutions to consumers. We continue to take action against unauthorised firms placing promotions in this area, especially on social media platforms like TikTok. Vulnerable consumers are pushed towards fee-based services that may not be appropriate for them, when they could have benefited from free sources of debt advice and potentially more suitable solutions.
We continue to use our tools and powers to take appropriate action against firms to prevent serious harm to consumers in this area.
For all data, examples and information, please find the full FCA publication here.
