| Link(s): | Financial promotions quarterly data 2022 Q4 | FCA Financial watchdog blocks thousands of misleading ads | FCA FCA highlights areas of focus for firms implementing the Consumer Duty | FCA |
Context
The FCA has published its Q4 2022 financial promotions data and an annual financial promotions overview for 2022. The Q4 2022 page analyses the latest data covering 1st October 2022 to 31st December 2022 from the FCA’s action against authorised firms breaching financial promotion rules and referrals and investigations into unregulated activity.
Key points to note
In Q4 2022 the FCA reviewed 870 promotions (14% of which involved general insurance and protection), and its intervention resulted in 3,973 amends or withdrawals (from just 42 firms), which compares to just 573 for the whole of 2021.
- Retail lending (with 53%), retail investments and general insurance & protection are the sectors with the highest amend/withdraw outcomes, amounting to just over 80% of our interventions with authorised firms.
- Some of the most common breaches involved credit brokers, life insurance providers and various investment providers.
The data and commentary in relation to the whole of 2022 is positioned as highlighting the fact that the FCA required firms to amend or remove 8,582 promotions during 2022 – 14 times more than 2021, and that it has published over 1,800 alerts to help prevent consumers from losing their money to scams. The web page in relation to the 2022 data is broken up into the following sections:
- key messages
- examples of our work on financial promotions during 2022:
- 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
Next actions
None – for information and awareness.