How to Successfully Advertise Financial Services on Facebook Without Breaching The Terms of Service

You go to check your email, hoping all is well. 

One new unread message.

Headline: “Your ad was rejected”. 

From: The Facebook Ads Team.

Son of a monkey, not again. 

If you’ve tried running ads for any kind of financial services on Facebook, you’ll be all too familiar with this message.

Happens to the best of us, you miss one little line of Facebook’s ad policy and suddenly you can’t get that ad approved for the life of you. 

Even when you do everything right, sometimes the automated systems mess up and disapprove you anyway.

The good news is there are ways to minimise your frustration and time spent trying to get that pesky ad approved.

Below we’re going to summarise all Facebook’s ad policies around financial services in one convenient place.

Then we’re going to give you our simple guide on how to maximise your chances of getting your Facebook ads approved in the financial services industry.

 

Facebook’s Ad Policies for Financial Service Businesses: 

Facebook has many sets of guidelines in place, which can often be frustratingly vague.
The bottom line is that they always have final say over whether or not your ad gets approved, and is allowed to run on their platform, or not at their own discretion. 

You can view their complete advertising policies here.

Below we’ll summarise all the policies relating to financial services.

The format is as follows: we’ll tell you the section of the policies and the specific policy number e.g. (1-1 Prohibited Content) so you can read the whole policy, and follow up with our “TLDR” or “Too Long, Didn’t Read” summary of each point for your convenience. 

 

Restricted Content

Facebook distinguishes between “Restricted Content” and “Prohibited Content” in their ad policies.

They don’t offer any formal definition of the differences between the two, but from our experience, it’s as follows:

• You can advertise Restricted Content on Facebook, as long as you meet all the criteria they list.
• You can’t advertise Prohibited Content on Facebook. There are some exceptions, such as cases where you can with their prior approval, but in general, consider these a lot harder to get an ad approved for.

This is the content that’s restricted for financial services: 

 

5-7 (Restricted Content) – Financial and Insurance Products and Services

Ads promoting credit card applications, or financial services with accredited institutions must clearly provide sufficient disclosure regarding associated fees, including APR percentages, transaction fees, interest rates and the physical address of the entity offering the product within the ad’s landing page. Ads promoting credit cards, loans or insurance services must be targeted to people 18 years or above. Ads promoting credit cards, loans or insurance services must not directly request the input of a person’s financial information, including credit card information.

Not Allowed:

• Ads must not promote misleading or deceptive services related to student loan consolidation, forgiveness, or refinancing.

TLDR: 

If you’re an accredited institution your ad’s landing page must list the following: 

• Fees for your service including an APR.
• Transaction fees.
• Interest rates
• Your business’ physical address. 

If you’re offering credit cards, loans or insurance you can’t advertise to anybody under 18 and you can’t directly request financial information (like credit card numbers). 

Prohibited Content

…and this is the list of content that’s prohibited for financial services (sheesh): 

4-1 (Prohibited Content) – Community Standards

Ads must not violate our Community Standards. Ads on Instagram must not violate the Instagram Community Guidelines.

TLDR: 

We’ll go over the community standards guidelines comprehensively in a future article since there’s a lot to cover.

The main things you want to avoid are as follows: 

• Using trademarked images or brands that don’t belong to you.
• Using deceptive business models like Ponzi/pyramid schemes and confidence schemes
• Spamming consumers with promotional content.

 

4-3 (Prohibited Content) – Financial Information

Ads must not request financial information, including bank account numbers, bank routing numbers, credit or debit card numbers, credit scores, income, net worth or how much debt someone has without our prior permission.

Examples:

• Lead ad form fields inquiring whether a person has declared bankruptcy
• Lead ad form fields inquiring whether a person has personal debt, or how much debt they’ve accumulated
• Lead ad form fields requesting identifying information that would provide insight into a person’s financial status

TLDR: 

You can never directly ask your customer for any kind of financial information without Facebook’s prior permission. 

This means if you need to collect any of this information from your consumers, you either need to contact Facebook and get approval or collect the information further down the line (e.g. once they’ve signed up on your website). 

 

4-12 (Prohibited Content) – Personal Attributes

Ads must not contain content that asserts or implies personal attributes. This includes direct or indirect assertions or implications about a person’s race, ethnic origin, religion, beliefs, age, sexual orientation or practices, gender identity, disability, medical condition (including physical or mental health), financial status, voting status, membership in a trade union, criminal record, or name.

Examples

• Allowed: 
• Ad creative that describes or shows the promoted product or service
• “We have financial services to cover every financial need.”
• Not Allowed:
• Text referencing to or alluding to personal attributes or characteristics of the targeted group or individual.
• Using the word “other” to reference a personal characteristic.
• “Broke? Bankrupt? Check out our services.”

TLDR: 

Your ads can never directly refer to your customer using “personal attributes”.

What are “personal attributes”? 

Anything directly or indirectly describing specifics about their person. 

So you can’t use anything that shows you have any level of special prior knowledge over who you’re targeting. 

You can only describe your product, not your consumer, in your ads. 

 

4-20 (Prohibited Content) – Payday Loans, Paycheck Advances, and Bail Bonds 

Ads may not promote payday loans, paycheck advances, bail bonds, or any short-term loans intended to cover someone’s expenses until their next payday. Short term loan refers to a loan of 90 days or less.

TLDR: 

You can’t advertise short term loans on Facebook intended to cover expenses until payday.

This means you can advertise short term loans, as long as they’re not targeting people in desperate situations.  

 

4-29 (Prohibited Content) –  Prohibited Financial Products and Services

Ads must not promote financial products and services that are frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices.

Not Allowed:

• Initial Coin Offerings
• Binary Options
• Contract For Difference Trading

TLDR: 

Facebook doesn’t allow certain financial products and services frequently used to scam people, even if your business is legitimate. 

This includes initial coin offerings (ICOs), binary options and contracts for difference trading (CFDs). 

Lead Ads Specific Policies

And finally, one policy specific to lead form ads: 

9-6 (Lead ads) – Insurance Information

Ads must not request insurance information, including current insurance policy numbers, without our prior permission.

Examples:

• Lead ad form fields requesting a person’s insurance company name or details
• Lead ad form fields inquiring whether a person is insured or carries certain forms of insurance

TLDR: 

In addition to the above policy where you can’t ask for financial information, you also can’t ask for insurance information in a lead form without Facebook’s prior permission. 

 

Facebook Ad Policy Summary for the Financial Services Industry

Here’s our “cheat sheet” of what to do, and not to do, to get your ads approved consistently. 

DO:

• Check the permissions on any images or brands you use in your ad
• List all your fees, APR, transaction fees, interest rates and physical address on the landing page
• Contact Facebook if you need permission to collect financial information
• Run ads describing your product or service and its benefits
• Contact Facebook if you need permission to gather insurance information

DON’T:

• Use trademarked images or brands without permission
• Use deceptive business models like a pyramid or Ponzi scheme
• Advertise insurance, credit cards or loans to people under the age of 18
• Collect financial information without prior written permission
• Run ads that describe your consumer using personal attributes
• Run short-term “payday” loans
• Try to advertise “misleading” products and services like ICOs, binary options of CFDs on Facebook
• Ask for insurance information in a lead form

Conclusion

If you want to avoid having your ads rejected, the simplest way is to learn Facebook’s ad policies and make sure you follow them.

We hope this article helped you achieve just that.

It can be irritating having to sift through multiple web pages to find the issue, so feel free to bookmark this page for later and we’ll keep it up to date with changes to their policies.

 

If you enjoyed this article or found it helpful, check out more e-commerce marketing content on the inSyte blog or listen to the inSyte Podcast for top tips straight from industry professionals. 

We’ve also written a guide on getting ads approved in the health care industry, so check that out if it applies to you.

This article was brought to you by Syte.

We’re a specialist e-commerce digital marketing agency dedicated to driving up your bottom line.

It just so happens we have experience getting financial services ads to run successfully over Facebook and many other platforms. 

If you need any help running your business’ Facebook ads, feel free to reach out with the form below or check out our case studies page to see what we’ve been able to do for our clients.