FCA publishes draft guidance on financial promotions on social media

On 17 July 2023, the UK Financial Conduct Authority (the FCA) published a press release and draft guidance dealing with financial promotions on social media. This has been a hot topic for a number of years. The consultation period ends on 11 September 2023. Responses can be sent by email to gc23-2@fca.org.uk.

The key messages from the draft guidance are that:

– The FCA proposes to keep the key principles of Finalised Guidance 15/4, including its expectation that financial promotions should be standalone compliant.

– The consumer duty (which comes into force on 31 July 2023) will “raise our expectations of firms communicating financial promotions on social medium above the requirement of Principle 7 to be ‘clear, fair and not misleading’.

– The FCA will continue to focus on compliance issues on social media (and, in particular, says firms should consider whether financial promotions for debt counselling would be appropriate given the complexity of such services).

– For unregulated buy-now, pay-later products, the promotion must outline the relevant risks and be balanced (and there’s a proposed example, in Figure 6, of a clear, fair and not misleading promotion).

– The FCA sets out its expectations on prominence standards for social media channels.

FCA consults on draft updated temporary guidance to credit card, overdraft and personal loan consumer credit firms dealing with customers needing COVID-19 related payment holidays

Earlier today, on 19 June 2020, the UK Financial Conduct Authority issued a consultation on draft updated temporary guidance to credit card, overdraft and personal loan consumer credit firms dealing with customers needing COVID-19 related payment holidays.

There’s draft guidance for credit cards (including retail revolving credit), for overdrafts and for personal loans. There’s also a draft handbook instrument.

My one page summary is (and you can see a bigger version if you click on it):

If you want a pdf copy, please get in touch: russell.kelsall@TLTsolicitors.com.

FCA consults on changes to CONC 7 following the introduction of the Bounce Back Loan Scheme

On 5 June 2020, the UK Financial Conduct Authority (the FCA) published a quarterly consultation, CP20/7, proposing to make changes to Chapter 7 of the Consumer Credit Sourcebook (CONC).

The proposed changes to CONC follow the introduction of the UK Government’s ‘Bounce Back Loan Scheme’ (or BBLS) which introduced a new category of exempt credit agreement in Article 60C(4A) of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Regulated Activities) Order 2001 (the RAO) (for more, please see our earlier blog post). But the RAO did not exempt the collecting of debts due under such BBLS loans.

The draft instrument proposes to amend CONC so that:

– CONC 7.12 is extended so it applies to firms who would be consumer credit lending but for the changes made to the RAO for BBLS loans; and

– the expression ‘regulated credit agreement’ is expanded to include an exempt agreement under Article 60C(4A) of the RAO (but not in CONC 7.1.5G, CONC 7.6 and CONC 7.7.4G).

The deadline for responding to the consultation is 5 July 2020.