Three Compliance Considerations for Fintech Advertisers

In the booming world of Fintech marketing and advertising, it’s crucial for advertisers to be stringent with compliance standards. Ignite OPM defines Fintech as technology designed to support financial services. Fintech can include investing apps, budget trackers and planners, services designed to assist financial health, and banking service apps. 

Whether an advertiser is working with an in-house compliance team or an agency, a compliance review process needs to be in place to ensure content that’s created by performance partners is compliant with internal, regional, and national regulations. These regulations are designed for investing and banking apps/services but should be taken into consideration throughout the Fintech industry.

When creating the review process, it’s important to consider several compliance factors. Ignite has gathered three common considerations when managing Fintech brands:

1 – The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) advertising laws help Fintech companies outline their compliance standards for publishers. From a performance perspective, one of the most well-known laws requires publishers to make any compensation from the advertiser known if an ad contains an affiliate link. Additionally, these laws prevent advertisers from providing false information about products, services or features, or withholding information that a consumer would want or need to know. Financially speaking, these regulations require advertisers to provide investors with significant information concerning entities offered for public sale and prohibits deceit, misinterpretations, and other fraud.

2 – When working with content publishers, Fintech advertisers need to be vigilant during the editorial process to ensure their compliance standards are met. Due to the hefty nature of FTC and SEC regulations, among others, it’s important that Fintech companies have a compliance team to monitor any assets created by external partners, such as content publishers. These teams work to ensure the advertiser’s compliance standards are properly implemented. Two of the biggest compliance standards to include are 1) ensuring the article is truthful, doesn’t promise anything or make testimonials about an experience, and 2) is not discriminatory by singling out any one demographic. Editorial teams may not double-check with advertisers to ensure content is compliant, so this responsibility falls on the advertiser.

3 – If you are a Fintech advertiser that needs to follow bank compliance regulations, in addition to the FTC and SEC laws, you may also need to comply with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s (FDIC) regulations. These regulations require the words “Member FDIC” or a logo to be visible whenever a financial institution promotes a product or service. Additionally, these advertisers may follow the “one-click” rule wherein an additional link is included with digital marketing materials. The link would direct consumers to additional disclosures or terms and conditions. This rule varies based on the distribution channel but is commonly used in order to avoid regulatory headaches down the road.

Although this is not a complete list of financial marketing regulations, it is a good place to start as Fintech advertisers consider building out a compliance review process.  

The information provided in this article does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal advice; instead, all information, content, and materials available on this site are for general informational purposes only. This content is accurate at the time of publication and may not be updated.