Why this is a design problem
Firms tend to treat financial promotion compliance as a copy review: somebody reads the words and signs them off. The rules as written are at least as much about how the page presents information as about what it says.
CONC 3.3.1R(1A) requires a promotion to be "balanced" — benefits not emphasised without a fair indication of the relevant risks — and to not "disguise, omit, diminish or obscure important information". Both are satisfied or broken by layout, hierarchy and contrast, not by vocabulary.
A bold headline promising an outcome, with the qualification set beneath it in small grey type, uses accurate words and fails the test. So does a disclosure that arrives below the fold, or one that only appears after the page has settled and the reader has already scrolled past where it landed.
CONC 3.3.2R makes the point explicit by requiring promotions to be "easily legible" and to use "plain and intelligible language", and to specify the name of the person making the communication.
One number can trigger a whole table
This is the rule most often tripped by a website rather than by a brochure, because websites accumulate numbers.
CONC 3.5.3R(1) requires a representative example where a financial promotion indicates a rate of interest, or an amount relating to the cost of credit, whether as a sum of money or a proportion of a specified amount. Promotions relating solely to 0% APR agreements are excepted under CONC 3.5.3R(2A).
Where it is triggered, CONC 3.5.5R(1) sets out what the example must contain.
- The rate of interest, and whether it is fixed or variable, expressed as an annual rate.
- The nature and amount of any other charges included in the total charge for credit.
- The total amount of credit.
- The representative APR.
- For deferred payment agreements, the cash price and any advance payment.
- The duration of the agreement.
- The total amount payable.
- The amount of each repayment.
And CONC 3.5.5R(5) governs how it appears: clear, concise and prominent, accompanied by the words "representative example", with each item given equal prominence, and with prominence no less than that given to any other information about the cost of credit or to any incentive to apply.
That last clause is the one that catches marketing pages. If the incentive is the loudest thing on the page, the example is not as prominent as the incentive, and the page does not comply however complete the table is.
The other triggers
CONC 3.5.7R requires the representative APR to be stated, without the full example, in three further situations: where the promotion indicates that credit is available to people who might otherwise find it difficult to obtain, where it includes a favourable comparison relating to credit, and where it features an incentive to apply.
All three are patterns that live naturally on a web page. "Approval regardless of credit history", a comparison table against a competitor’s rate, a time-limited offer on an application — each brings the APR requirement with it, and each is the kind of content added by a marketing team long after the compliance review of the original page.
What to actually do on the site
- Treat the representative example as a component, not as copy. If it is a template that renders wherever a rate appears, it cannot be forgotten on the next page somebody builds.
- Check prominence against the incentive, not against the body text. The rule compares the example to the loudest cost or incentive on the page.
- Eliminate layout shift on pages carrying disclosures. Text that moves as the page loads is text a reader scrolls past, and "obscure" is a reasonable description of that.
- Keep the firm name on the promotion, as CONC 3.3.2R requires, rather than assuming the header covers it.
- Audit the pages marketing added after sign-off. Comparison tables, landing pages and seasonal offers are where triggers appear without anybody realising a trigger has been pulled.
A note on scope: CONC is the consumer credit sourcebook, so these particular rules apply to promotions concerning credit. Firms operating under other parts of the Handbook have their own promotion rules with the same shape — clear, fair, not misleading, with prominence requirements — and this guide does not pretend CONC covers everyone.
