2012-09-06
Bank of Lithuania approves guidelines on advertising financial services to boost advertising quality and improve information provision to users
The Bank of Lithuania has approved the Guidelines on Advertising Financial Services targeted at financial market participants who are subject to supervision by the central bank. While providing information on potential benefits of any service or product, they also will have to state clearly the potential risks. The document contains not only general requirements for advertising financial services, but also specific requirements for advertising investment services and products, deposits, insurance, and credit agreements.
“We expect the Guidelines for Advertising Financial Services to help market participants improve the quality of this type of advertising, form consumer confidence in the financial market and its participants, and will protect users against unjustified expectations or deception. The document also presents examples of inappropriate advertising of financial services noticed during the implementation of the supervision function and provides good practice examples, from other countries too,” Vilius Šapoka, director of Financial Services and Markets Supervision Department of the Bank of Lithuania.
In his words, after the Bank of Lithuania took over the supervision of the entire financial market and the analysis of consumer credit market was completed early this year, there has been obvious need for a more detailed explanation of the requirements laid down in the Law on Consumer Credit, which are applied to the content and form of a consumer credit agreement advertising became obvious, as advertising sometimes is too aggressive and non-informative. This is important in other areas of financial services too. The Guidelines for Advertising of Financial Services, therefore, are to come into force on 1 November this year.
All sort of financial service advertising, including but not limited to the material advertising objects such as flyers, brochures, letters to customers and other regularly renewed and sent publications, visual advertising means such as posters, show-bills, billboards, signboards, and others, commercials on radio and TV, as well as interactive adds broadcast on internet via interactive voice message systems, and other forms of advertising, will be subject to requirements laid down in these Guidelines.
Advertising delivery via phone, fax, email, and similar means is allowed only upon a user’s consent or request, excluding cases provided for by laws.
In case of a violation of advertising provisions laid down in legal acts regulating financial markets, the Bank of Lithuania may apply enforcement measures.
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