A life insurance lead generator has been condemned by the Advertising Standards Authority for a Facebook advertisement and website page which misleadingly made it look like they were an insurance comparison site.
Five issues relating to an advert and webpages by MJP Invest Limited were investigated by the watchdog and all were upheld.
The advert, which appeared on Facebook in August last year was posted by Emily Harding, a financial blogger, and featured an image of a man and a woman who both looked to be over 50 years of age.
The people in the image were looking at a mobile phone and text on the advert included: “Why don’t more mums know about this?
“Mums in their 50s could now qualify for family protection worth £41,438 or more.
“Just answer a few questions and MoneySavingTricks.co.uk finds the best life policies in minutes.”
The second element of the complaint related to a webpage on www.moneysavingtricks.co.uk which encouraged people to use the site to get a “quick quote within minutes”.
Additional text on the page read: “With MoneySavingTricks.co.uk it’s easy to get a free quote and see what you could get” and “Compare quotes from leading life insurance providers” beside logos of a number of well-known insurance companies.
The webpage also contained text which said insurance quotes from the site came from “vetted, FCA authorised brokers and insurers”, a claim the ASA said there was no evidence to support.
A further page on the site prompted visitors to answer a number of questions alongside text that said “As seen in” followed by logos for five media publishers.
In addition to this, a Facebook banner from Harding stated “EMILY’S SAVING TIPS. SAVE. INVEST. PROTECT” alongside a head-shot of a woman, a short bio and some information about buying life insurance. The banner linked to a webpage that was created on August 10, 2022.
The ASA found that the Facebook advertisement, banner and webpages on Moneysavingtricks.co.uk were all misleading.
It said that the Facebook posts implied they were published by a blogger named Emily Harding rather than MJP Invest.
It also noted that the claims in the Facebook advertisement and the website name “MoneySavingTricks”, were misleading because they “falsely implied that the product being offered was only recently available and was more special than it was”.
The inclusion of the recognisable publisher logos were also found to misleadingly imply that the advertiser had been positively reviewed in those publications.
JNB leads, the firm responsible for MPJ Invest Limited said it had reviewed the advertising material highlighted to it and had withdrawn the adverts.
The ASA ruled that the adverts must not appear again.
It told MJP Invest to “ensure that their future marketing communications made clear that their purpose was to gather consumer’s personal information for lead generation” and told them to ensure that they did not give the overall impression that they were written by personal individuals who were independent from the business.
The watchdog also warned the firm not to falsely imply that their products were only recently available and were more special than they were.
jane.mathews@ft.com
