In its data for the first quarter of the year ending March 31, the FCA said it reviewed 379 promotions.

Of these, just under a third – 84 – were amended or withdrawn, with around 76 per cent of them involving website or social media promotions.

The FCA said it intervened with 21 authorised firms and 72 per cent of these interventions were within the retail investments and retail lending sectors.

The City watchdog said some of the most common breaches involved claims management companies’, retail finance promotions and peer-to-peer lending platforms.  

“We identified and took action to correct several ‘clickbait’ promotions [content designed to attract attention and encourage visitors] in the general insurance & protection sector,” the FCA said.

“In particular, firms using terms such as ‘benefit’ or ‘treat’ as well as mis-leading imagery to attract consumers when the firms are advertising life insurance.”  

In Q1 2022, the FCA received 7,234 reports about potential unauthorised business.

From these, it issued 762 alerts about unauthorised firms and individuals, with more than 11 per cent of these related to clone scams.

Many of these involved breaches of the financial promotion restriction online and in almost all cases we asked for the websites to be taken down.

Although the alert figure was down from 2021 when it issued 1,410…