The Financial Promotions data from Q1 2023 shows that 2235 promotions were amended or withdrawn as a result of FCA intervention. Nearly half of these were identified by FCA’s own proactive monitoring and almost all related to retail investments or retail lending. Among the reasons for intervention were:
- the use of misleading trading names and the halo effect
- firms taking advantage of the cost of living crisis
- examples of SIS being rolled over without appropriate notifications
- missing risk warnings on multi-media promotions – the firm in question had such a significant number of breaches that it applied for a VREQ and withdrew all non-compliant promotions