The financial industry is heavily regulated and compliance rules exist for a reason. Specifically, to protect clients' interests, reduce financial risks and help you build a solid reputation as an adviser who prioritises client satisfaction and integrity. The rules and regulations can change and keeping up with these changes is essential if you want to be compliant.
Understanding and adhering to the rules and regulations means you can confidently market your services without worrying about non-compliance.
Difficulties associated with compliance
Choosing to ignore industry regulations and legislation, or even accidentally overstepping a boundary, can result in serious consequences for you and your business. Falling foul of compliance regulations means your reputation will be seriously damaged. After all, your reputation is the main reason clients choose you over the competition. It’s little wonder that many advisers avoid marketing on social media, via Google Ads and even creating blogs. After all, you can’t fall foul of compliance rules with your marketing if you don’t do any marketing!
That’s not a solution. Marketing, in all its forms, is essential for the success of your business. It is possible to produce compliant posts, you simply need someone who knows the industry and the regulations to help guide you and take care of the elements that can be time consuming.
Getting compliance right when marketing
Compliance means ensuring any marketing for financial products is clear, fair and doesn’t mislead clients. In other words, you can’t state that all investments will see returns of 200%, unless you can guarantee this will actually happen.
To create compliant online marketing content, simply be honest about what you’re offering, the costs, the potential rewards and the potential issues. You remain compliant if a client has been told everything they need to know to make an informed decision.
Our dedicated team fully understands the complexity of marketing and compliance. We’ll work with you to ensure all of your marketing materials are fully compliant.
We aren’t compliance officers, but we’re not far off
At WEBPRO Adviser, we’ve been working with financial advisers for over 20 years. We know the challenges you face when it comes to compliance and we have solid relationships with most of the financial services networks and their compliance departments. We’ve done this for so long, we often joke that we could be compliance officers ourselves! Our writers and project managers already know what the rules are and what is likely to be flagged by compliance officers – we know what we can and cannot say. What’s more, we often liaise directly with compliance departments on your behalf, you don’t even need to get involved.
Recap: Social media posts, Google Ads, blogs and other content: they are all types of marketing and need to comply with financial regulations. It can seem challenging and perhaps more hassle than it’s worth. However, marketing is essential for the growth of your business and keeping your online content compliant is easy when you know how. It’s time to partner with the experts and ensure all your marketing reflects your business positively while remaining within compliance guidelines.
WEBPRO knows
In 2023 the FCA issued £52.8 million in fines to firms falling short of their regulatory requirements. You need to be meeting all compliance standards today.
