Over the past couple of years, the Federal Reserve has implemented a series of interest rate hikes to combat inflation, with a total of 11 increases since March 2022.
What does this mean for banks and consumer finance organizations? Well, every time there’s a rate change, companies have to ensure their marketing materials accurately reflect these fluctuations.
While there’s no formal requirement from the Federal Reserve for when these rate changes need to be reflected, it’s in the best interest of both consumers and businesses to mitigate potential risks by updating marketing content as quickly as possible.
Is your organization experiencing challenges in keeping marketing materials up to date in the face of changing interest rates?
The Challenge for Banks and Financial Institutions
In the past, compliance teams implemented manual processes to try to manage these updates. Given the limited frequency of changes over the last decade, this was more manageable. But, in today’s day and age, these manual efforts are increasingly burdensome and don’t provide the type of coverage that regulators are looking for and consumers expect.
First, the digital marketing landscape is becoming increasingly complex. There are more channels, platforms, and content than ever before.
Second, it’s not just your organization’s content that needs to be monitored and reviewed—it’s also those of third parties, partners, and affiliates. These external websites, which you don’t control, make it even more difficult to catch outdated rates and get them updated in a timely manner.
Third, what about about the places that you don’t know about that are promoting your brand or product(s)? How do you effectively detect and update these sites through manual review? With no formal relationship with these platforms, many of whom are sub-affiliates, it becomes even more challenging to ensure accuracy and remediate potential issues.
Lastly, this process needs to be tracked in a way that companies can show regulators their ability to discover, monitor, and act on any outdated information in a timely manner. This adds a layer of complexity to a manual process, which is record keeping and reporting.
The old way of manually monitoring for accurate rates is intensive, stressful, and leaves the company exposed to risk. And, especially in today’s economy, most organizations are already being asked to do more with less, given the volume of cuts across the consumer finance space. This is where technology comes in.
PerformLine Automates and Streamlines Compliance Efforts
Say goodbye to early mornings and late nights desperately scouring the internet for outdated interest rates related to your offers.
With PerformLine, you can automate and streamline the discovery and monitoring of interest rates across the web, social media, and third-party emails to ensure accuracy and quickly identify any outdated rates or promotions.
How does it work? PerformLine’s automated monitoring technology will look for updated language in proximity to terms like “APR,” or other offers and promotions. If outdated language is found across a company’s website, affiliates, partners, or other previously unknown placement, your team will be alerted. Now, instead of spending countless hours manually looking for content, you can spend your time taking action on the content that has yet to be updated. More coverage, less frustration.
To cap it off, all of your remediations and communications are documented in one place within the platform so you can demonstrate to regulators that you are diligently working to update materials and making a good-faith effort to protect consumers and comply with regulations.
See it in Action: Client Success Story
One bank client experienced a rate change within the first 60 days of partnering with PerformLine. Historically, they would have handled this change by manually searching for APR placements, which would only cover a small fraction of their overall online footprint.
Using PerformLine, they were able to review all placements and promptly identify at least one publisher with outdated content within 24 hours of the rate change. A remediation notice was sent directly through the platform, and as a result, the publisher swiftly updated their content within 24 hours of receiving the notice.
Using PerformLine, this client was able to identify and remediate an outdated interest rate change within just 48 hours, saving them the countless hours that it would have taken to find that placement manually—a feat that wouldn’t have been possible without automation. All of this was tracked and documented directly in the platform in the event of an audit or other regulatory inquiry.
Are You Ready for the Next Rate Change?
How is your team ensuring that your content is up-to-date and accurate across channels, platforms, and third parties?
Let PerformLine help—schedule some time with our team to learn more.
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