Alain Desmier, founder of Contact State, said the fact the watchdog will investigate insurance adverts "sends an important message to the life insurance industry" and urged advisers and providers to report any suspicious advert and stamp out bad practice.
Misleading adverts continue to result in misplaced negativity to the sector as a whole.Alan Knowles
He added: "Misleading lead generation will not be tolerated and should be called out and reported by the industry as and when it appears.
"Firms that buy leads need to be absolutely sure of the sources they are acquiring customer data from and will need to prove they have done robust due diligence."
Steve Casey, marketing director for Square Health, has worked with FTAdviser in the past to interrogate and crack down on suspicious insurance adverts.
He commented: "It's good to see the ASA is taking these types of adverts seriously. Hopefully this will be a catalyst to ensure that customers are better protected from those who may wish to take advantage of them."
Similarly, Alan Knowles, managing director of Cura Financial Services, said: "It’s always a shame to see adverts that mislead people into enquiring about insurance.
"Many of us within this sector work incredibly hard to improve trust within insurance, and misleading adverts continue to result in misplaced negativity to the sector as a whole."
Background
FTAdviser raised red flags in April 2020 when it was discovered some unscrupulous advertisers were using the Covid crisis to frighten consumers into making rash decisions about their insurance.
As reported at the time, misleading and fraudulent lead generation adverts were populating Facebook and other social media accounts.
At the time, Dan Thut, operations director of insurance advertising firm Rocketer, said fraudulent companies have been using this time to prey on scared and vulnerable people, using social media platforms to promote their "misleading ads".
simoney.kyriakou@ft.com
