The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is the UK regulator for financial services firms and financial markets. It decides which firms may carry out regulated activities such as lending, insurance, investments and payments, sets the rules they follow, and polices how financial products are marketed to the public.
How the FCA works
A business that carries out a regulated financial activity in the UK must be authorised by the FCA, or registered with it for certain activities, or be an appointed representative working under an authorised firm’s responsibility. The FCA publishes all of these on the FCA Register, a free public database that shows each firm’s reference number, its permissions, key individuals and its contact details. Alongside it, the FCA Warning List names firms it believes are operating without authorisation or are impersonating genuine firms, often called clone firms.
Authorised firms follow the FCA Handbook. For marketers, the parts that matter most are the rules on financial promotions, which require marketing to be fair, clear and not misleading, and the Consumer Duty, in force since July 2023, which expects firms to communicate in a way customers can understand and to deliver good outcomes for them. The FCA has published guidance on promotions on social media, including posts by finfluencers.
The FCA’s status also feeds into ad platforms. At the time of writing (October 2026), Google requires advertisers promoting financial services to UK users to complete financial services verification, which checks FCA authorisation, and other platforms apply their own checks.
Why it matters for a UK business
If you market a financial firm, the FCA’s rules shape nearly every word you write: the risk warnings, the representative examples, the balance between benefits and risks, and who must approve the copy before it goes live. Mistakes are not just an ad rejection. An unapproved promotion can be a criminal offence.
The FCA matters to businesses outside finance too. A retailer offering customers finance on a sofa or a kitchen is usually carrying out credit broking, which normally needs FCA authorisation, often a limited permission. A lead generation site that collects enquiries for mortgages, loans or insurance may be carrying out a regulated activity itself. And any business partnering with a financial firm, through affiliate links, sponsorship or referral deals, should check that the firm is genuinely authorised for what it offers.
Common mistakes
- Promoting a partner without checking the FCA Register, or checking only that a name appears.
- Missing that the firm’s permissions do not cover the product being promoted.
- Copying contact details from an email or website instead of the Register, which is how clone firm scams succeed.
- Offering customer finance on your own site without checking whether you need credit broking permission.
- Letting copy change after compliance approval, for example in a landing page tweak or ad variation.
How to act on it
Before promoting a financial firm or product, search the FCA Register for the firm, note its reference number, confirm its permissions cover the product and check that the website, phone number and email match the Register entry. Search the Warning List as well. Record the check and the date.
If your own business is regulated, build compliance sign-off into the marketing workflow so every change to approved copy goes back for approval. My banking and finance SEO work runs on that basis, with content written for regulated firms and passed through their compliance process before publication.