A technology company is aiming to help prevent Financial Planners from flouting social media rules and landing themselves in hot water with the FCA.
Last week, the regulator revealed its finalised social media guidance as part of a crackdown on misleading financial promotions on websites like Twitter.

Following this, Intelliflo has made a 'template' available for Financial Planners to help create a FCA compliant social media policy for all staff at their companies.

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A survey by Intelliflo in 2014 showed 58% of advisers actively used social media but just 25% had written policies in place that all employees must follow. Some 23% openly admitted they didn't have any policy in place, while 52% didn't know.
Jo Gilbey, Intelliflo's marketing director, said: "Now that the FCA has published its guidance for social media usage, advisers must ensure they have adequate controls in place that mean they will not fall foul of the regulator.
"Putting a policy together from scratch can be a daunting task so we wanted to share a 'starter for ten' with advisers, to help them get on top of this as quickly as possible."
Setting a social media policy should be done by the senior executive with overall responsibility for external communications within the firm, Intelliflo advised.
The policy should be communicated directly with all staff and ideally placed in a secure shared area of an intranet or web-based facility that can be accessed by all relevant parties, it added.

Intelliflo's survey also asked advisers to list the reasons why their company gets involved with social media. The top answers were:

1. To attract new clients (55%)
2. To be seen to be keeping up with modern communications systems (45%)
3. To keep up to date with financial news and events (39%)
4. To help with website search engine optimisation (SEO) (39%)
5. To communicate with existing clients (38%)
6. To see what our competitors are doing (9%)
7. Not sure, just seems like we should be doing something (9%)
8. No idea (3%)