We all know adverts on the television are gimmicky and rarely give us any really indication of what the product is actually like, yet at the same time we can’t help but be persuaded by them.
For example, until you can taste what you can see on the television, food adverts cannot demonstrate what the product is like, but they reel us in with a catchy song or funny story. This is fair enough, they want to make people aware of their product and they can’t just have somebody standing there saying it tastes nice.
My bug bear is with adverts in the financial services industry. What do people want to know about financial products? They need key information like interest rates, costs, flexibility and their choices. Providers can tell people about these things if they wish on adverts, but rarely do. Instead they do things like have a group of people, who are actors, singing songs. Absolutely nothing to do with the price of fish, but it gets people through their doors.
Another few annoyances of mine are adverts about life insurance. Some give examples such as ‘You can get cover for as little as £5 per month and you can be covered for upto £500,000’, making it seem like you can get half a million pounds cover for that price when you wouldn’t. Also, although there are some types of policy which you genuinely don’t need to give medical information, you do for the majority. Yet some adverts say you don’t need to complete any medical details forms, when they certainly will. There is no way these providers can insure people without knowing about their medical history, otherwise they would get those in bad health taking out policies. I’m sure they have got their wording just right, or a little disclaimer on the bottom to make sure the advert is compliant, but it isn’t fair to mislead people.
My biggest problem is with mortgage providers misleading people into making them think they have the best products and are the most likely to accept your application. Some go for the easy option and use the extremely vague ‘we have good rates’, others have a super-low flagship interest rate they can quote but which is only available to a small minority of borrowers. You may need over 40% equity in your property, earn megabucks, and don’t mind paying the £3,000 application fee that they keep quiet. Their other approach to get you through the door is to insinuate that they are more likely to accept your application by reeling off figures which they manipulate in my opinion. There is no way a high street bank accepts over 90% of potential first time buyers. Additionally, it does not help your application in any way shape or form if you do something like manage a children’s football team, help your elderly neighbours with their shopping or anything else that you do in your life to help others. The lender will not take any of these things into account. I think it’s wrong to suggest lenders try and help people like this more than others because they don’t, it doesn’t even make sense, but for some reason they are allowed to continue to do it.
We shouldn’t be making important decisions on the basis of advertisements. The only way to ensure you can analyse what is on offer is to have an impartial look yourself at the options available and use your own judgement, or trust in the judgement of somebody who doesn’t have any bias.
Jason Hinde DipPFS
20th July 2015
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