Don’t Let Creativity Breach the Rules
Every Christmas, something strange happens in financial services. The tone softens, the marketing brightens, and suddenly even the most regulated firms feel the pull toward “seasonal creativity.”
It’s understandable — December is busy, competitive, and emotionally charged. But it’s also a month where the FCA sees a marked rise in non-compliant promotions. Not because firms stop caring about the rules, but because the pace, pressure and sentimentality of the season can blur the judgment of both marketing teams and compliance reviewers.
For lenders, brokers, digital credit platforms and comparison sites, the festive season isn’t just a commercial opportunity. It’s a regulatory minefield wrapped in tinsel.
Why Christmas Promotions Are Uniquely High Risk
The problem isn’t Christmas itself — it’s the way the season changes behaviour.
Marketing deadlines compress. Senior reviewers go on leave. Affiliates and introducers ramp up activity. And because December is inherently emotional, messaging tends to lean more heavily on reassurance, uplift and urgency.
Those ingredients create a perfect environment for the two things the FCA dislikes most: misleading impressions and pressure to borrow.
Promotions become warmer, friendlier and more suggestive. Risk disclosures start to feel out of place next to cartoon reindeer. APRs get nudged towards the bottom of a graphic because “it looked cleaner.” And before anyone realises, a campaign that felt charming becomes a regulatory headache.
Where Firms Most Often Slip Up
Three categories of error account for most festive compliance breaches.
Over-promising the emotional outcome
Christmas creates a temptation to imply that credit will “save Christmas” or help families “make the season special.” It only takes a slightly sentimental tagline to cross the line into implying guaranteed acceptance or overly easy eligibility. The FCA has repeatedly warned that emotional persuasion must never replace transparency.
Letting visuals dilute mandatory information
Design teams love Christmas. Unfortunately, so does the FCA — but for the opposite reason. Every year regulators find promotions where required information is:
- hidden in decorative elements,
- overshadowed by festive imagery, or
- presented in fonts that look charming but read poorly.
If a customer needs to “look past the Christmas effect” to find the truth, the promotion won’t meet the Consumer Duty’s clarity standard.
Losing control of introducers and affiliates
This is arguably the biggest operational risk of the season. Affiliates and lead generators often produce their own festive campaigns at speed, sometimes without approval, sometimes without understanding the rules, and sometimes without the slightest interest in compliance.
Under Consumer Duty, firms cannot blame partners for harm caused by poor marketing. Ownership of the distribution chain sits firmly with the manufacturer.
How to Keep Promotions Festive Without Becoming High-Risk
Christmas marketing can absolutely work — it just needs more discipline, not less.
A good starting point is to review every festive concept through the lens of consumer understanding. If warmth, humour or seasonal energy makes the message more persuasive than informative, the FCA will expect you to rebalance it. This doesn’t mean removing charm; it means ensuring charm never obscures cost, risk or realistic outcomes.
Digital teams should also consider how customers behave differently in December. People spend faster, scroll faster, decide faster. That increases the burden on firms to ensure customers still see and absorb essential information. If your journey relies on customers reading the small print, December is the month it will fail.
The same logic applies to vulnerability. Christmas is a pressure point for many households. Emotional and financial vulnerability often overlap, and the FCA expects firms to recognise this. Festive promotions that lean too heavily into sentiment can unintentionally pressure vulnerable customers, even when the intention is harmless.
Where Senior Management Should Focus
The FCA will judge firms on how they manage three things during the festive rush:
- Control,
- Consistency,
- Culture
Control means a strong sign-off, even when the office is half empty. Consistency means every promotion — email, banner, social media post or affiliate message — reflects the firm’s standards. Culture means staff resisting the December temptation to cut corners because “it’s only a seasonal campaign.”
If Consumer Duty is about good outcomes, then Christmas is the ultimate stress test.
Thematic Festive Period Data
| Theme | Data Point | Source |
|---|---|---|
| High volume of Christmas-time promotions requiring intervention | FCA reviewed 1,358 promotions from authorised firms in Q4 2024 (Oct–Dec) and required 3,697 promotions to be amended or withdrawn. | FCA Financial Promotions Quarterly Data, Q4 2024 |
| Significant rise in promotions breaches overall | FCA required nearly 20,000 promotions to be amended/withdrawn in 2024, almost double the figure for 2023. | FCA Press Release on misleading adverts, 2024 |
| Consumers face higher financial stress at Christmas | 40% of UK adults were worried about affording Christmas spending; 52% of parents with children under 18 shared this worry. | FCA Press Release: “Scammers looking to exploit financial stress at Christmas” (Dec 2023) |
| Many consumers borrow to fund Christmas | 29% of parents planned to borrow or had borrowed to cover Christmas costs. | FCA Christmas Spending Press Release (Dec 2023) |
| Consumer Duty enforcement linking promotions to harm | FCA found repeated issues where promotions “obscured key costs or presented unrealistic impressions of eligibility”, directly breaching Consumer Duty. | FCA Consumer Duty Implementation Update, mid-2024 |
| Third-party introducer marketing risk | FCA reports continued supervisory concern over introducers and lead generators producing non-compliant or misleading financial promotions. | FCA Gateway Policy & Supervisory Findings, 2024–2025 |
| January arrears surge after Christmas borrowing | Industry-wide data (FCA & credit reference agency commentary) confirms January is consistently the highest arrears month of the year, linked to festive-period borrowing. | FCA Consumer Credit Market Commentary, 2024–2025 |
How ALPH Can Help
ALPH Legal & Compliance supports lenders, brokers and digital platforms throughout the busiest period of the year. We help firms refine festive campaigns, audit external partners, tighten governance and ensure every customer-facing message meets FCA expectations — without draining the creative energy that makes seasonal marketing effective. Contact our team for support on ensuring you remain compliant over the festive period.