Marketing in regulated sectors
If you’re a claims business, a law firm or a financial firm, you’ve probably had the experience of briefing a marketing agency and then spending the next month explaining what a financial promotion is, or the other version, where compliance signs off everything so slowly that the marketing never happens. I know how the compliance side works, so that argument gets settled quickly, and then I build to what your compliance people decide.
I co-founded Claims Bible, which operates under an FCA authorisation for claims management, and I’ve built and run its marketing since 2021. Every page on it is a financial promotion. The personal injury work sits under the referral fee ban in the legal aid legislation. The email sits under the privacy regulations. I keep the compliance register, and I’m the one who has to make the marketing work inside all of that.
What that looks like in practice
A register, not a memory. Every compliance question that’s ever come up on Claims Bible has a numbered entry, more than 40 of them, and each one separates what’s known to be fact from what somebody remembers from what the external compliance consultant has actually ruled. The rule that goes with it is that no compliance question gets answered from reasoning. Either I can point at the regulation, or it goes to the consultant, and the register records which.
Consent that would survive being looked at. Separate boxes for each thing being consented to, none ticked in advance, the exact wording stored with the record, plus a timestamp, the page it was captured on and where the person came from. If a form can’t meet that, it doesn’t go live. One data capture on a sister site couldn’t be made to, so I switched it off rather than patch it. And when a list of 17,114 people that had come in through a lead marketplace turned out to have been gathered on a blanket opt-in, the 15,233 of them in the new database were excluded from marketing rather than argued about.
Structures built round the rules. Personal injury work sits under the referral fee ban, so the shape of an arrangement matters more than anything in the marketing.
The claims intake I built for a firm of solicitors lives on the firm’s own domain and feeds the firm’s own case system, and I operate it on their behalf. I don’t collect the enquiries and pass them on.
We settled that structure before anybody built anything, and that’s the part I’d point to. It turned out to be the better way to build it as well, because the handoff between two businesses is where the information usually got lost.
Corrections at scale, with evidence. When the Financial Ombudsman changed its default interest rate at the start of 2026, Claims Bible still said 8% on 129 pages, including inside letter templates people were sending to their own banks. A script with a dry run made 217 edits across 126 files and three templates, eight pages were rewritten by hand, and the wording was changed to “base rate plus 1%” so it can’t go stale the same way again.
Redirects that don’t lie. On a regulated site a page served correctly with the wrong lender’s name on it is worse than a missing page, so when a matching tool offered seven confident redirects that were wrong, I rejected them and did the mapping by hand.
The decision I’d point to
The Claims Bible homepage said our partner firms had recovered over £18.3 million for the people we’d introduced, and I couldn’t find where that number came from. So I went back to all three partner firms and asked each of them for their real figure in writing. Added up, what could be evidenced came to £11.3 million, and I changed the site, in the five places it appeared, to say over £11 million.
Nobody asked me to make our own number smaller. But a figure you can’t evidence isn’t an asset, it’s a question waiting to be asked, and I’d rather have the smaller number with a letter behind it. If you’re going to hire someone to write your financial promotions, that’s the instinct you’re hiring.
The rules I’ve built marketing around
FCA claims management authorisation and the financial promotion rules as they apply to page titles, descriptions and calls to action. The consumer credit rules on affordability, overdrafts and persistent debt. The Financial Ombudsman’s limitation periods and its 2026 interest rate change. The 2013 rules on success fees and the 25% cap. The legal aid legislation’s referral fee ban and how to structure round it. UK GDPR and the privacy regulations on electronic marketing, soft opt-in, and who’s the controller. Where the line sits on any of it is your compliance officer’s call, and my part is building the thing that works inside it, so you’re not paying two people to argue about it.
How I work
I’m not a compliance consultant and I don’t sign things off. Claims Bible has an external consultant for that, and the register exists partly so that his rulings are recorded and mine aren’t mistaken for them. What I do is build marketing that’s designed to pass, keep the record that shows why it should, and know when to stop and ask. If you’ve already got a compliance function, I’ll work to it. If you haven’t, I’ll tell you that you need one before we do anything else.
The proof
What all of this looks like from a law firm’s side, including the questions I stop and send to a solicitor, is in the note on marketing for a regulated firm.
The case studies are the Claims Bible compliance register, Armed Forces Claims, and the Claims Bible rebuild, which was signed off in full by the external compliance consultant on the day it relaunched.
“Gavin is both competent and diligent in his approach to clients and the end piece of work. A real pleasure to work with.”
Kevin SpearDirector at KRS Mortgage Services, a regulated mortgage and equity release adviser, on a website build
Questions I get asked
Do you sign compliance off?
No, and I’d be wary of anyone in my position who said they did. Claims Bible has an external compliance consultant for that, and the register exists partly so that his rulings are recorded and mine aren’t mistaken for them. What I do is build marketing designed to pass and keep the record that shows why it should.
Can you buy in personal injury enquiries for us?
No. Personal injury sits under the referral fee ban, and the shape of any arrangement there gets settled on advice before anybody builds anything. It isn’t something I’d work out from first principles.
What I built for one firm of solicitors is their own intake. It sits on their domain, feeds their case system, and I operate it on their behalf, rather than my collecting enquiries and selling them on.
How do you stop a claim on the site going stale?
With a register and a script. When the Financial Ombudsman changed its default interest rate at the start of 2026, Claims Bible still said 8% on 129 pages, including inside letter templates people were sending to their own banks. A dry run first, then 217 edits across 126 files and three templates, eight pages rewritten by hand, and the wording changed to “base rate plus 1%” so it can’t go stale the same way again.
What do you need from us before we start?
What you’re regulated by, what you’re trying to promote, and whether you already have a compliance function. If you have one, I’ll work to it. If you haven’t, I’ll tell you that you need one before we do anything else, which is a slower answer than you wanted and the right one.
Who this is for
Law firms, claims management companies, mortgage and financial advisers, lenders and anyone else whose marketing has to answer to a regulator. Especially if you’ve been through the cycle of hiring an agency that didn’t understand the rules and then a compliance review that undid the work.
Tell me what you’re regulated by and what you’re trying to promote, and I’ll tell you what I’d need to check before we start.
Tell me what’s not working.
I’ll tell you whether I can help and roughly what it would involve.