When you first enter the financial services industry you will be greeted by a whole host of acronyms, terms and percentages that may mean very little to you as a marketer.

Some of us have only ever come across the acronym LTV (Loan Total Value) when we were taking out our mortgage.

We’ve probably also heard of various organisations that makeup the financial service sector such as the FCA or Financial Conduct Authority.

In this post I’ve put together 5 key financial terms every marketer should know when they enter the financial services world:

Financial Promotions

In previous industries you may have found that by encouraging a person to take action, didn’t require any additional eyes or elements being added.

The financial services sector works slightly different.

Any communication that is invoking a person to engage in investments, lending or securing debts against an asset needs to have the relevant regulatory wording.

As a marketer you will need to keep this in mind when putting together any kind of marketing collateral. Even simple social media posts can count as a financial promotion if they are encouraging a visitor to take an action.

Compliance

In a nutshell, the compliance departments ensures the financial firm is operating within the rules of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the industry’s main regulator within the UK.

The compliance department will ensure that everything that is produced is compliant with the FCA standards. If you ignore the compliance department, then your campaigns can be pulled in a matter of minutes.

Compliance also liaise with advisers around their own cases and ensure they are working within the rules of the FCA.

AR’s and DA’s

Within the financial services sector there are 2 types of firms, AR’s or Appointed Representatives and DA’s or Directly Authorised firms.

An AR is a business that has been authorised to carry out a regulated activity under the authority of another firm.

For instance within financial networks you may have a firm that is authorised under one firm that is authorised under the network. The network essentially handles the compliance, regulatory and authorisation alongside the FCA.

DA’s, on the other hand, are directly authorised by the FCA. In other words they are not part of a network and are often stand alone firms that are successfully growing.

DA’s handle all of their own compliance and regulatory affairs.

Understanding if the client you are working with is either an AR or DA will affect how you approach your marketing.

CAS/None-CAS

CAS stands for Competent Adviser Status and its opposite, None Competent Adviser status.

This essentially means that the adviser has passed all of the relevant examinations as well as gaining hands on practical experience with live cases.

In other words they have either completed a regulatory task such as completing a mortgage case or an investment for a customer.

In most instances an advisers case will be graded either A or B.

All newly qualified advisers have to go through a period of CAS, until such time the firm is confident that the adviser can advise without the need for supervision.

From a marketing angle, this may affect the content that an adviser can present on their own website.

Suitability

All advisers need to ensure that the advise they are delivering is appropriate for the individual. This is going to have a knock effect in terms of tone and responsibility of the marketing material you put out there via a range of channels.

Within this blog post I’ve covered the most basic and common terminology often used within the financial services industry.

However, the language goes far beyond those mentioned in this short blog posts. I wanted to give you a bit of a flavour of the kinds of words you can expect when working in the industry.

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