Article by Phil
As we’ve highlighted before, we can’t quite understand why the FCA continues to allow unregulated introducers to operate in the financial services market – we can’t see how these companies provide any benefit to consumers?
The latest example came last week in a report by insurance broker Lifesearch which called for leads generated online to be certified to enable companies to audit their quality. The protection industry (particularly life insurance) is plagued with online lead generators offering the same leads for sale over and over again to companies. These leads are often generated through misleading adverts which should be controlled by the FCA – but for some reason don’t seem to be.
Of course, we would argue that financial services companies should never “buy” online enquiries anyway, for these very reasons – but the question remains why isn’t something being done about it? A recent survey by Financial Adviser showed that 20% of advisers had started to look at lead generators to help them to get business post lockdown.
The report found that many of these lead generators were based offshore in order to avoid the regulations.
New organisation The Transparency Task Force is working to improve the marketplace and has written to MP’s calling on them to open an enquiry into financial services scams and ways to tackle them – which will include unregulated advertising and introducers. That can only be a good thing.
They might want to look into why the FCA allowed the marketing of unregulated mini bonds to go unchecked for the last 3 years, leading inevitably to millions in losses for unsuspecting consumers.
It really would be much easier if consumers could only “buy” products or receive advice from regulated providers – at least then they could have confidence that there was protection in place, along with control and standards.
So next time you consider a financial service offer or advertisement, please check to see who is making the offer and whether they are authorised by the FCA. If they aren’t, we suggest you look elsewhere.
Stay safe.
