A marketing message sent to a segment of your book is a financial promotion. What ICOBS 2.2, the Consumer Duty and FG24/1 require inside a WhatsApp message.
A brokerage schedules a message to two thousand clients: "Renewal season is here — reply QUOTE and we'll review your home cover, most clients save on the bundle." Two separate regimes have just been engaged. The first is direct marketing law, and most firms now check it. The second is the financial promotion regime, and most firms do not check it at all, because the message did not feel like an advert. It went out from the same inbox that handles claims.
The regime does not care about the inbox. Here is the test, what changes once a message passes it, and what a UK brokerage should have in place before the next campaign.
A financial promotion is an invitation or inducement to engage in investment activity, communicated in the course of business. For a general insurance intermediary, arranging cover engages controlled activities under the Financial Promotion Order, so a message inviting a client to take out or extend a policy is caught. Being FCA-authorised means you may communicate such promotions — it does not mean the rules on their content stop applying.
Two points from the FCA's finalised guidance on financial promotions on social media, FG24/1, published in March 2024, close off the usual escape routes.
The business test does the useful filtering instead. It requires a commercial interest on the part of the communicator; it exists to exclude genuine non-business communication. Everything sent from a brokerage number about cover has a commercial interest behind it.
Most of a broker's WhatsApp traffic is servicing, not promotion. The distinction is worth writing down, because it also drives which Meta template category you can use.
| Message | Financial promotion? | Why |
|---|---|---|
| "Your motor policy renews on 14 October. Your renewal invitation is attached." | No | Administration of an existing contract; no invitation to take up something new |
| "Your premium was not collected. Please call us before cover lapses." | No | Servicing an existing policy |
| "Renewing this month? Add home emergency for a few pounds a month." | Yes | Inducement to take out an additional contract |
| "We've moved to a new insurer panel — most clients are seeing lower premiums." | Yes | Inducement, and a pricing claim that must be substantiated |
| "Know a business that needs a broker? Send them our number." | Yes | Promotion of your regulated services, and an affiliate question if you pay for it |
| Adviser's individual reply: "Given the flat roof, I'd suggest we look at the specialist market." | Advice, not a promotion | Personal recommendation — ICOBS suitability and record-keeping, not the promotion rules |
The line matters commercially as well as legally. Meta's own categorisation refuses utility status to a template with promotional content, so the message in row three is a marketing template with all the consent and pricing consequences that follow — a mechanic covered in detail in our guide to getting WhatsApp templates approved.
Four requirements bite once a message is a promotion.
Sitting over all four is the Consumer Duty's consumer understanding outcome. Paragraph 2.31 of FG24/1 reminds firms of the duty to support consumer understanding "and encourage them to consider whether a promotion is likely to meet this requirement if it can only be communicated on a social media platform by obscuring or partly truncating key information." A promotion that only works because the caveat is below the fold has answered the question.
FG24/1 paragraph 3.15 requires firms to have "an adequate system in place to sign off digital media communications, in line with the requirements of ... SYSC 3 and SYSC 4", by a person of appropriate competence and seniority. Paragraph 3.16 asks firms to keep adequate records of relevant communications under SYSC 9, and adds a warning that applies directly to messaging platforms: "Firms should not rely on digital media channels to maintain records, as they will not have control over this."
That is the operational consequence for a brokerage running client communication over WhatsApp. A promotion approved in a WhatsApp group chat, sent from a personal handset, and evidenced only by what is still on that handset, fails on both counts. What works is dull and cheap:
The same records serve a second purpose. When a complaint arrives, being able to produce the exact wording a client received is what turns an argument into a file — the point made at length in our note on archiving WhatsApp under SYSC 9 and ICOBS.
FG24/1 devotes a chapter to affiliate marketing, and the exposure is asymmetric. An unauthorised person who communicates a financial promotion without approval from an appropriate authorised person, where no exemption applies, may be committing a criminal offence under section 21 of FSMA — punishable by up to two years' imprisonment, an unlimited fine, or both. The FCA also expects firms to monitor affiliates proactively and to consider how many relationships they can realistically oversee.
Translated into broking: the accountant who forwards your promotional message to their client list, the garage that posts your quote link, the introducer paid a share of commission. Each is communicating a promotion. Either it is approved by you and stays as approved, or the arrangement needs rethinking. The commercial side of those relationships is covered in our piece on referral fees and introducers.
None of this displaces the marketing consent rules. PECR and the UK GDPR still decide who you may message at all, and that analysis runs in parallel — see prospecting on WhatsApp within PECR and the GDPR. Consent gets the message out of the door; the promotion rules decide what it may say once it is there.
Generally no. Renewing an existing contract on its existing terms is administration of that contract rather than an invitation to engage in a new one, and ICOBS 6.5 governs what a renewal notice must contain. It changes the moment the message also invites the client to add a product, upgrade cover or move to a different panel, because the promotional element is then present regardless of how much of the message was administrative.
It can. FG24/1 paragraph 2.8 confirms that private and invitation-only channels are capable of carrying financial promotions, and nothing in the test depends on audience size. What changes with a genuine individual message is that it is more likely to be advice — a personal recommendation with its own suitability and record-keeping duties — rather than a promotion.
FG24/1 paragraph 3.15 says a person of appropriate competence and seniority, under SYSC 3 and SYSC 4. In a small brokerage that is usually the compliance officer or a director, not the person running the campaign. Record who it was and when, because Meta's approval of a template says nothing about your compliance with FCA rules.
No. Paragraph 3.16 tells firms not to rely on digital media channels to maintain records, because the firm does not control them. Keep the approved wording, the send date and the audience in a system you control, and treat the platform as a delivery mechanism rather than an archive.
The financial promotion regime described here is UK law. An EU or EEA intermediary reaches similar ground through Article 17 of the IDD and Article 20's requirement that information be objective and comprehensible, plus national marketing rules. The practical output — balanced wording, marketing identifiable as marketing, sign-off, records you control — is close enough that one process can serve both, provided the citations in your compliance manual are the right ones for the jurisdiction.
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