Grant Thornton Financial Marketing Group, which advises financial organisations on compliance with FSA guidelines, described as "disturbing" the results of its review of 117 financial promotions from 94 financial services companies, which appeared across a variety of advertising disciplines in 2005.
It said 76% of retail investment ads failed to outline the appropriate risk warnings, 57% of mortgage promotions failed to meet the FSA's criteria on percentage and headline claims and 61% of insurance promotions delivered misleading statements.
Mortgage, insurance and retail investment ads were guilty of presenting misleading information. In mortage marketing, wide-reaching claims such as "the best rates" or "mortgage rates are at their lowest for years", which can neither be proved nor provided, were among the most popular tactics.
In insurance marketing, inappropriate quotes such as "one in three people will get cancer in their lifetime" were used to scare audiences. The information that a sizeable percentage of the said cancer sufferers would not be eligible for cover by the policy was selectively excluded.
Other problems identified were overuse of jargon and advertising deals for headline-grabbing purposes that were not available in practice.
The FSA took over responsibility for the rules applying to the selling of insurance and mortgage products in 2004.
Ian Gorham, a partner with Grant Thornton Financial Markets Group, said: "The UK financial services industry has had enough recent scandals in areas such as pensions and endowments, and it is time to adopt the necessary checks and balances to give investors the correct information.
"The fact that three-quarters of all UK financial advertisements and promotions that we scrutinised did not meet the requirements is highly disappointing, and even more so given some of the serious examples we found."
"It is absolutely critical that the industry takes the FSA requirements more seriously. Companies must ensure that a more balanced message is used in their advertising."
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