The advertising watchdog has ruled Lloyds shouldn't be forced to ditch the claim it is "by your side" because HBos employees were found guilty of fraud.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) received a complaint about a television advert for Lloyds Bank, seen on 10 February 2018.
Keystone Law, which represented victims of financial fraud committed at a corporate branch of HBos before its acquisition by Lloyds, challenged whether the advert was misleading.
Lloyds Banking Group argued the 'By your side' claim had been used in their adverts since 2015 and was an encapsulation of the services they provided and that both the voice-over and on-screen text supported that sentiment regarding a bank established in 1765.
The advertising watchdog ruled it was satisfied that viewers would infer the message was related to reliable, accessible and secure banking.
The ASA said: "We considered viewers would understand the ad to be a general brand promotion, and would understand the claim 'By your side' to be advertising puffery, not a claim that would be taken literally, or be seen as requiring objective substantiation.
"We did not consider that viewers would interpret the claim 'By your side' to be a commentary on the situation of the victims of the HBos fraud case, or to think that it was directly connected to their engagement with Lloyds bank in 2018.
"Further, in the context of a general brand promotional ad with no references to fraud, we did not consider the details of the HBos fraud case to be material information that needed to be included in the ad to prevent consumers from being misled."
The advert showed a black horse galloping through the countryside, past a memorial service, a suburban neighbourhood where a mother was caring for her baby and on a beach with children running behind it.
During the advert a female voice said, "Yesterday, today, and tomorrow we have been and always will be by your side."
At the end of the advert text stated "By your side for over 250 years" while music in the background included the lyrics "We've come a long, long way together, through the hard times and the good."
A spokesman for Lloyds Bank argued the advert had not promoted a specific product or service and therefore could be neither misleading nor have omitted information that consumers may have needed to make a decision.
They said there was no call to action for the consumer, no direction to call a phone number or visit a website so the ad could not be, by that definition, misleading.
The spokesman for Lloyds Bank said that in January 2017, two former HBos employees had been convicted for criminal actions alongside four other individuals in relation to criminal misconduct at the HBos Impaired Assets London and South office based in Reading.
They said the convictions related to criminal conduct before the acquisition of HBos by Lloyds Banking Group in 2009 and that following the convictions Lloyds launched a customer review, overseen by an independent reviewer to determine what compensation was due to the victims of that fraud.
They said there were approximately 70 companies/businesses which Lloyds Bank believed were impacted by the fraud so the proportion of companies/businesses impacted by the crimes was equivalent to less than 0.001 per cent of their 1.1 million business customer base.
emma.hughes@ft.com
