social media, regulation and personal finance companies

12 October 2010

Social media: treading carefully

Introduction

External:

• Media

• Regulators

• Customers and consumers

Internal:

• Compliance

• Marketing

• Customer service

• PR

You have many stakeholders…

What does the regulation say?

• The same rules apply

• Promotions lack risk warnings

• Non-promotional communications must “be fair, clear and not misleading”

• Are all social media channels appropriate for financial services companies?

• Be very careful with promotions

• Always provide a link to more info and, importantly, disclaimers

• You need buy-in and support from your compliance team

• Those running social media channels need a broad skill set

• Some channels are easier to use than others

• Don’t think of social media in isolation – join the dots with other channels, especially websites

What does this mean practically?

Just as people can talk about personal finance in traditional media without reading out disclaimers, so can they talk about personal finance on social media in a similar way

Plus there’s a lot more to social media than promotions…

• Customer service

• Networking (especially for and with brokers)

• Sharing interesting news and views

• Putting personality on a brand, which doesn’t require compliance!

• Involving customers

Don’t lose heart(!)

• Don’t view social media as a selling channel (yet)

• Organise internally

• Always link to back-up your posts

Key lessons

Any questions?