Financial copywriting – how to write compliant copy that converts (a 2024 guide)

In the financial copywriting world, compliant copy is copy that doesn’t breach the regulations of the finance industry.

If you’re going to write for finance, understanding how to write compliant copy isn’t negotiable. (Especially here in the UK, where virtually every financial business is regulated to some degree.)

Here, I’m going to explain everything you need to know about writing copy that works, while keeping the regulators happy.

Understanding the regulators

Financial businesses in the UK are usually regulated by the FCA (The Financial Conduct Authority), working alongside the Prudential Regulation Authority and the Financial Policy Committee.

They may also be regulated by other specialist professional bodies, depending on their niche, but the FCA are the one you need to be aware of 95% of the time.

The US equivalent is the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

What do regulators do?

In basic terms, regulators are there to try and stop financial businesses being scumbags.

(No, that’s not the technical term.)

Unfortunately, because there’s so much money moving around the financial industry, there’s a lot of potential for:

• Money laundering
• Financial fraud
• Insider trading

And various other unpleasant things. The regulator is there to try and prevent this kind of crime.

Of course, as a tax-paying moral copywriter, this side of their work won’t affect you much.

Regulators, though, are also tasked with overseeing conduct related to the marketing of financial products.

In other words, they have to make sure that companies selling financial products and services aren’t using scummy tactics to sell their products and services.

So, as a marketer writing anything marketing related, this means…

In financial copywriting, the regulators are keeping an eye on what you write.

They can’t read everything.

But anytime you write copy for a financial business in the UK, there’s a chance the regulators will read it.

And if they don’t like what you’ve written, they can and will make you change – or completely withdraw – your ads.

(According to their own data, the FCA forced advertisers to withdraw or change more than 10,000 financial ads in 2023 alone, so that’s not an empty threat.)

It’s your job as a copywriter to make sure your copy stays on the right side of the regulators, while still doing the job it’s meant to do…

Bring in new business.

What do regulators look for? (7 commandments of compliant financial copywriting)

Here, in my experience, are the key copy tricks and techniques you need to steer clear of, if you’re writing financial copy.

Steer clear of these deadly sins, and you should keep the regulator happy.

Financial Copywriting Commandment 1: Don’t make promises to consumers that aren’t based on evidence

The first rule of good copy is to tell the reader why they’ll benefit from using your product or service.

Unsurprisingly in the world of finance, that benefit can usually be distilled down into either saving money or making money.

(Through investment returns, savings interest, reduced fees, or whatever.)

Now, first things first:

It’s fine to sell benefits in regulated financial copy.

There’s nothing wrong with saying your readers could make 5% a year on a savings account, or that your analyst’s new stock portfolio could return 20% over the next year.

The difference between the financial copywriting niche and other industries is that you have to be able to provide concrete proof to back up any claim you make.

In a lot of markets, advertisers can be very manipulative and misleading, and no-one really cares.

No government operative has stepped in to point out that junk food ads never have fat people in them, or that wearing a new aftershave won’t necessarily make Scarlett Johansson kiss you on a fire escape.

(More to the pity.)

In finance, though, you need to be able to back up every claim you make with hard proof.

(Which is why research is such a key part of financial copywriting.

In the near future, I’ll be writing a mega-post about research, because it’s a skill you need to master as a marketer.)

Financial Copywriting Commandment 2: Always make your readers fully aware of the risk

This is especially relevant if you’re writing anything to do with investments.

In very basic terms, if you invest in anything, you can lose money.

You can make money, too. If you’re a good investor, you can make a hell of a lot of it. (Which is the only reason anyone bothers.)

But if you’re writing financial copy, you need to make sure your readers understand the risks they’re facing.

You can do this in a variety of ways, but it’ll usually be a case of adding disclaimers within the copy along the lines of:

‘You should never invest money you can’t afford to lose.’

‘All investments can go down, and if you’re not comfortable with that, you shouldn’t invest.’

And so on.

Financial Copywriting Commandment 3: Don’t base potential future results on past performance

This might be the biggest no-no in the business, and you’ll have it drummed into you by any compliance department.

Essentially, you can’t use the past performance of any financial instrument as proof that that asset will perform well in future.

Bitcoin shooting up this year is no indication it’ll do the same next year.

Property prices fell massively in 2008. But that doesn’t mean they’ll do the same in the next financial crisis.

Apple stock is probably the best performing share price of the past decade, but you still can’t use that to forecast what might happen in future.

NOTE. This doesn’t mean you can’t refer to past performance at all. There’s nothing wrong with pointing out that if every stock in an industry is increasing in price, it could mean that industry is worth looking at. It probably is worth looking at.

But you will have to add a similar disclaimer within the copy, noting – as you should – that while the facts back up your claim, anything can happen in future, and past performance is no indicator of future results.

Financial Copywriting Commandment 4: Always keep a record of any sources you use

Because financial copywriting relies so heavily on real-world proof, it’s vital you keep a record of where that proof came from.

Your research might involve:

• Stock performance
• Testimonials
• Press coverage
• External reviews of the product or service
• Quotes
• Government data
• Academic data

And so on.

If you’ve used any of these things in your advert, you need to be keep a record of where that data came from.

Usually that’ll be a web page, but it might also be a book, or a video.

Either way, keep a record of the links.

An example. Let’s say your ad is meant to promote investing to under-25s. A good way to do this might be social proof.

So, you do some research and find a statistic, quoted in the Times, showing that the number of under-25s choosing to invest has grown by 125% in the past two years.

You need to write the link to that study down, and add it to the copy document you send to compliance.

(The best way to do that is usually using Word’s ‘comment’ feature, but footnotes can work, too.)

Ideally, if a regulator comes to you six months after you’ve written an ad and asks where a particular figure comes from, you should still be able to go back and find the link.

Financial Copywriting Commandment 5: Only use reputable sources

Shocking, I know, but the internet is full of people making stuff up for clicks. Don’t quote those people in your copy!

Basically, if you wouldn’t use the source in an academic article, you probably shouldn’t use it in copy.

Acceptable sources are usually:

• TV shows on major networks
• National/International Press
• Academic Institutions
• Stock market data (I use Yahoo finance)
• Legitimate customer review sites
• Government data and other information
• Books and industry magazines

So if you stick mostly to these, you’ll probably be fine.

Financial Copywriting Commandment 6: Don’t cherrypick performance data

Cherrypicking means picking out the one or two bits of data that back up your copy’s claim when, actually, the majority of proof is against you.

So, if you were selling an investment advisory with a portfolio of 10 stocks, and 8 of the stocks were currently down, cherrypicking would be using the 2 ones that had gone up in your ad.

As a financial copywriter, you have to give the reader all the information they need to make an informed decision.

So, if you’re talking about gold as a positive investment over the next 10 years, but the gold price itself has gone down in the past six months, say that.

If a tech stock has shot up 20% in the past six weeks, but over the last year it’s gone down 50%, tell the reader that.

You get the idea.

Now, your immediate reaction might be ‘but that means my copy won’t work‘.

Actually, honesty can make your conversions go up. By giving readers the full picture, you’re treating them like adults, not idiots who’ll brainlessly believe overhyped copy.

People don’t like being told what to do. Do you know what they do like?

Being given the facts, and trusted to make their own decisions.

Financial Copywriting Commandment 7: Only use recent testimonials from current customers

Ideally, you want testimonials that are:

• Recent (ideally in the last year)
• From existing customers (not ex-customers)

As these are more trustworthy.

For instance, you may have a killer testimonial from two years ago, but the regulator will – quite rightly – argue that two years is a long time, and may not be representative of the company’s current level of service.

So, keep your testimonials recent and current.

(If you don’t have any testimonials right now, don’t be lazy. Go and get some. I don’t know how many emails I’ve sent to customers of various clients asking for testimonials. As long as you ask a big enough group of people, you’ll usually get two or three, and that’s often enough.)

The single most important thing to remember when writing compliant copy (a trap to avoid)

Here’s the kicker.

Up until now I’ve told you about compliant copy. But here’s the thing:

Regulations on financial marketing are a lot more subjective than you’d think.

They isn’t actually a hard set of rules in place that you can follow and be guaranteed to remain compliant.

The regulator doesn’t say ‘You CAN do this, but you CAN’T do this’.

Instead, they offer a set of rough guidelines, and then both you and the regulator have to interpret them as best you can.

For example, to my knowledge (as of April 2024), there is no hard rule that definitively states:

“All advertising testimonials must be from within the last year, and still be active customers.”

This would be easy to follow. Either your testimonials meet the requirements, or they don’t.

But that’s not how it works.

Because I’ve been doing this for a long time, I happen to know the regulator – fairly, I should say – doesn’t like out of date testimonials. I know that you should avoid using them.

But they don’t come out and outright say ‘YOU CANNOT USE TESTIMONIALS THAT ARE OLDER THAN A YEAR.’

So if you’ve got a killer testimonial, but it’s 11 months old…

Well, you have to make the call. It might be fine. But it might get pulled up.

It’s all down to interpretation.

So how do you, as a copywriter, decide what’s OK and what isn’t?

Let me introduce you to your new best friends…

Working with the compliance/legal team (3 things I’ve learned)

If you’re writing ads for any financial business in the UK – and probably in the USA – you will be dealing with a compliance/legal team.

Basically, once you’ve written your copy, you’ll send it to the compliance team to have a look.

They’ll check through it, and tell you what (if anything) they’d like you to change to make the copy more regulator-friendly.

I’ve dealt with (I think) 7 different legal and compliance teams, in various different financial sectors. Here are the 3 key things I’ve learned from working with them:

Different compliance teams will have different rules

You remember me telling you the regulator can interpret different rules in different ways?

Well, that goes for compliance teams, too. Just like the rest of us, they have to make judgements on what they think is compliant copy and what isn’t.

In real world terms, this means that different compliance teams like and dislike different things.

You can send one piece of copy to three different legal teams, and they’ll all want you to change different things.

(Usually – and mercifully – you’ll only be dealing with one at a time.)

You’ll find that the rules of what you can and can’t say in your copy vary. A lot.

For instance, once compliance team I worked with just would not let you use the word ‘money’ in any copy.

Even though it was business that let you trade money, with the goal of making more money, using money…

You were prohibited from using the ‘M’ word.

I’ve never encountered that anywhere else. This particular legal team had just decided the regulator wouldn’t like it.

(They may have been right, by the way. I’m not knocking them. It just struck me as an odd example.)

Whenever you work with a new compliance team, you’ll have to re-learn what’s OK to say and what isn’t.

Compliance teams vary in terms of how useful they are (SO DO COPYWRITERS – COMPLIANCE ED.)

I’ve worked with elite compliance teams who were so on it and well qualified that they could have quit their compliance jobs and – ethically – become independent financial advisors.

I’ve also worked with a compliance department who responded to all requests with an email that basically said:

“This is fine, but if the regulators question anything, it’s on you.”

Which basically made that whole department useless. But such is life!

Generally speaking, though, most compliance departments are full of nice, friendly, and helpful people who I’ve only occasionally had the odd blazing row with.

Oh, about that…

You’ll argue with them at some point, and that’s fine

Look, if you’re a creative, and you care about delivering results, occasionally you’ll bump up against a compliance rule that you think is stupid.

I once had an argument with a compliance officer who wanted me to add the word ‘potentially’ into a sentence about a stock we thought would do well.

Normally I wouldn’t have a problem with that. Of course it was only a potential opportunity. All stocks are only potential.

My problem is the copy already said that. And he wanted to say it twice.

The sentence was something like:

‘It’s a big if, but if this industry does reach its potential, we could be looking at 100% returns over just a couple of years.”

And he wanted to change the copy to:

“It’s a big if, but if this industry does reach its potential, we could be looking at potential 100% returns over just a couple of years.”

To me, that’s over-egging the ‘potential’ pudding. And, more to the point, it’s crap writing.

So, we argued about that particular change. Maybe I was wrong. (I wasn’t.) It happens.

But anyway, if you take your craft seriously, occasionally you’ll argue with compliance about things.

The key, though, is to remember that they’re on your side. Their job is to make sure you don’t get carried away and write copy that could lead to jobs being lost.

I’d much rather have an over-zealous compliance department – who occasionally annoy me – than one that basically washes their hands of the whole thing.

Finally: If in doubt about your copy, ask this 1 question

Perhaps the best rule I’ve heard about writing compliant financial copy came from my old boss, who said:

When you’re writing copy, think:

‘Would I be comfortable sending this to my elderly grandparents, knowing they might invest their life savings in this?’

If the answer is no, you should probably consider adjusting what you’ve written.

Remember, there’s nothing wrong with selling…

But don’t be a scumbag.

Financial copywriting and compliance: a summary

We’ve covered quite a lot here, so let’s summarise a few key points:

• The regulators oversee most financial businesses in the UK
• Part of their remit is to make sure advertising is not misleading or inaccurate
• Make sure your copy uses reputable accurate data sources, doesn’t mis-represent the product or service to your client, doesn’t use old or out-of-date testimonials, proves every claim you make and doesn’t make promises it can’t keep
• You will likely be sending your copy to a legal/compliance team who will check it for potential legal/compliance issues
• Each compliance team has it’s own likes and dislikes, which you’ll need to get used to

There you go! You now know more about writing for compliance than most marketers do. Good luck, and happy selling!