Interventions by the FCA on financial promotions have led to over double the number of promotions being amended or withdrawn by authorised firms in the second quarter of this year.

The regulator’s interventions between April and June resulted in 3,273 promotions being amended or withdrawn in comparison to 1,507 in the same quarter last year.

The promotions were amended of withdrawn following the regulator’s intervention with 39 authorised firms.

Nearly one in four interventions related to retail investment offers.

During the quarter the FCA reviewed 943 financial promotions. Of these 69% were reviewed from its own monitoring, 11% following concerns from consumers, 10% from firms and 6% from other UK regulators.

The majority of the promotions focused on retail lending (66%) with a quarter covering retail investment offers (23%), 5% covering retail banking, 3% pensions and retirement and 3% general insurance and protection.

The retail investments and retail lending sectors had the highest amend/withdraw outcomes, totalling 89% of FCA interventions with authorised firms.

Some of the most common breaches involved claims management companies, credit broker firms and contract for difference (CFDs) providers.

The FCA issued 528 alerts on unauthorised firms and individuals during Q2 and 11% of these were clone scams. The regulator received 5,544 reports about potential unauthorised business during the quarter.

It also proactively reviewed 187 promotions relating to 19 firms that were promoting lifetime mortgages and identified concerns with promotions from four firms, following the regulator’s previous findings around later life mortgage advertising. These promotions either did not provide sufficient balance given to the benefits being promoted or the prominence of the risks/downsides were not presented sufficiently.

This quarter the regulator said it has engaged with several registered cryptoasset firms who provide backing to crypto on/off ramp services and to third party firms. The FCA said it was “encouraged by the steps many registered cryptoasset businesses are taking to address our concerns”, by engaging with authorised firms to have them approve the promotions of partner firms.

The FCA tightened its rules on firms’ ability to approve financial promotions for unauthorised persons in February.

The tightening came after a number of cases where authorised persons have approved promotions by unauthorised persons, often within the same firm, and problems have occurred.