FCA financial promotions rules apply to nearly everything a financial services firm publishes about its products – not just formal ads. Most marketing teams have no intention of misleading anyone; what creates the risk is volume and speed, and the distance between what marketing wants to say and what the rules will actually allow.

A single product launch can spin out dozens of promotions: paid social, display, email, landing pages, affiliate copy, app store descriptions. Under Financial Conduct Authority rules, every one of these counts as an FCA financial promotion, and every one has to clear the same bar before it goes live.

The FCA has made clear it's watching FCA financial promotions closely. It publishes data on the promotions it intervenes on, and the numbers have climbed sharply: in 2024, authorized firms amended or withdrew 19,766 promotions following FCA intervention – up 98% on the year before, and up from under 600 in 2021. The direction is consistent: more scrutiny, faster intervention, and less patience for promotions that read well but fail the standard.

What counts as a financial promotion?

The definition sits in section 21 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (FSMA). A financial promotion is an invitation or inducement to engage in investment activity, communicated in the course of business.

That definition is deliberately broad. It does not care about the channel. A polished brochure, a one-line paid social caption, an email subject line, an affiliate's landing page, and an influencer's post can all be financial promotions if they invite or induce someone to act.

There are exemptions. The Financial Promotion Order sets out carve-outs for certain audiences and circumstances, such as communications to investment professionals or high-net-worth investors. For most consumer-facing marketing, though, the safe assumption is simple: if it promotes a regulated product or service to the public, it is in scope.

The core standard: fair, clear and not misleading

The rule that governs the content of a promotion is short and well known: it must be fair, clear and not misleading. For investment business this sits in COBS 4; for consumer credit it sits in CONC 3. 

In practice that means three things working together:

• Fair: benefits and risks are presented with balance. A promotion cannot lead with an attractive return and tuck the risk into the footer.

• Clear: the average reader in the target audience can understand it. Technical accuracy is not enough if the meaning is buried.

• Not misleading: nothing is overstated, and nothing material is left out. Omission can mislead just as much as a false statement.

What Consumer Duty changed

The Consumer Duty, set out in PRIN 2A and in force since 2023, raised the bar again. Its consumer understanding outcome asks firms to do more than avoid misleading people. Promotions are expected to actively support good decisions and be understood by the people who see them.

The shift is subtle but important. A promotion can be technically accurate and still fall short of the Duty if a real consumer would walk away with the wrong impression. Marketing is now judged on the outcome it creates, not just the words on the page.

Risk warnings and prominence

Where a product carries risk, the promotion has to say so, and the warning has to be seen. Prominence rules mean a risk warning cannot be set in smaller text, lower contrast, or below the fold while the benefits sit front and centre. 

This is one of the most common failure points, because prominence is fragile. A warning that is compliant in a desktop mock-up can collapse on mobile, get cropped in a social placement, or disappear when an affiliate rebuilds the page. For more on how UK firms have responded to tighter expectations, see our review of recent UK risk-warning changes.

Approval, sign-off and the financial promotions gateway

Under section 21, a financial promotion must be made or approved by an authorised person. In 2023 the FCA introduced the financial promotions gateway; it became mandatory in 2024. This means firms now need specific FCA permission to approve promotions for unauthorised parties.

Alongside approval comes record-keeping. Under COBS 4.11, a firm must make an adequate record of any promotion it communicates or approves, and the FCA's guidance is that firms should also record why they were satisfied the promotion met the rules. In practice that means a trail of what was approved, by whom, and on what basis, so the rationale behind a sign-off can be reconstructed later.

The UK regime, at a glance.

For a wider view of what UK regulators are prioritising, read about the regulatory pressure points in-house GCs should consider in the UK, and how marketing compliance for financial services is evolving.

Where financial promotions go wrong

The rules are rarely the hard part. The hard part is applying them consistently across every promotion, every channel, and every change.

Scenario 1: The buried risk warning

A campaign is signed off with a compliant risk warning on the desktop landing page. The paid social version, built later by a different team, drops the warning below a carousel that most users never scroll past. The words exist. The prominence does not.

Scenario 2: The unbalanced performance claim

An email leads with a headline return figure. The balancing context, that past performance is not a guide to the future and that capital is at risk, sits three scrolls down in grey text. Technically present, practically invisible.

Scenario 3: The affiliate who went off-script

An approved promotion is handed to an affiliate, who rewrites the copy to lift conversion. The new version overstates the benefit and quietly drops a qualifier. It is live for weeks before anyone internal sees it.

What links these is timing. In each one the firm understood the rule perfectly well, and the promotion still went out because the review that should have caught it happened too late, or never reached the version of the asset that actually published.

How teams keep financial promotions compliant at scale

Most firms that stay on the right side of the FCA have stopped treating review as a final gate and moved it into the workflow itself, so the routine checks run as content is made and experienced reviewers spend their time on the calls that genuinely need legal judgement. What that review has to do becomes clear once you have seen where promotions fail. It reads content against the fair, clear and not misleading standard as a question of meaning and balance, because the test turns on the impression a promotion creates rather than on any list of banned words. It assesses prominence in the placement where a warning actually appears, so a desktop mock-up is never the last word. Affiliates, introducers and partners fall inside the same boundary, since their promotions carry the obligations of anything produced in-house. And the record it leaves can be reconstructed later, so the basis for a sign-off is on file by the time the FCA asks for it.

This is the layer Haast is built for. Haast is an AI marketing compliance platform that reads promotions against your firm's own interpretation of the FCA rules, set to the level of caution your firm has chosen rather than an off-the-shelf rule set. It reviews content before publication and then keeps watching live pages and social placements for the drift that tends to creep in after sign-off. Each decision is logged with a time stamp and a recorded reason, so the rationale holds up if an examiner asks about it later.

Put that in place and the three scenarios end differently, though rarely in the order they arose. The affiliate's rewritten page no longer runs for weeks, because live monitoring reads the version that is actually published rather than the one that was approved. The performance email is stopped at draft stage, when the balancing context is missing or too faint to meet the standard. The buried warning is assessed in the social placement itself, so the loss of prominence shows up while the ad is still in build.

Haast is not a replacement for your compliance team. It takes the repeatable load off them so their hours go to the harder calls, and its implementation is handled by Haast's in-house legal team, who translate your policies and risk appetite into the platform.

See how Zurich cut compliance review times by 50% using the same compliance AI platform.

If you want to see how Haast reviews financial promotions against FCA rules before they go live, book a demo with the team.

Frequently asked questions

What is a financial promotion under FCA rules? An invitation or inducement to engage in investment activity, communicated in the course of business, under section 21 of FSMA. It covers ads, websites, emails, social posts and affiliate content, regardless of channel. 

What does fair, clear and not misleading mean? Promotions must present benefits and risks with balance, be understandable to the target audience, and avoid both false statements and misleading omissions. The standard sits in COBS 4 for investments and CONC 3 for consumer credit. 

How did the Consumer Duty change financial promotions? It added a consumer understanding outcome, so firms must show their promotions support good decisions and are actually understood, not merely accurate.

Who can approve a financial promotion? An authorised person. Since the introduction of the financial promotions gateway in 2024, firms need specific FCA permission to approve promotions for unauthorised parties. 

Do social media posts count as financial promotions? Yes, if they invite or induce someone to engage in investment activity. The medium does not change the obligation, and prominence of risk warnings still applies.