What is a financial promotion?

A financial promotion is, broadly, a communication that markets a financial product or service or invites someone to engage with one. That covers a wide range of material, from an advertisement for an investment or an insurance product to a social post promoting financial advice, and the label matters because such communications are subject to specific rules.

Regulators pay close attention to financial promotions because they can shape decisions that have real financial consequences. In Australia, financial-product advertising falls under ASIC oversight through the Corporations Act 2001 and related guidance, which expect promotions to be accurate, balanced, and not misleading. In the United States, the promotion of securities and investment services can engage the SEC and FINRA. The exact rules depend on the product and the audience.

The practical consequence for a marketing team is that a financial promotion cannot simply go out. It needs a documented review against the relevant rules and the firm's own checks, and the firm needs to be able to show afterwards that the review happened. Process and recordkeeping carry as much weight as the wording.

Cohiva Campaign helps a financial-services or fintech team operate that review as an enforced control. Go-live is rejected at the API until the team's checklist passes, multi-stage approvals keep the person who created a promotion separate from the person who approved it, and every decision is recorded in an append-only audit with a timestamped certificate on a pass. It helps you comply and keeps the record; it does not guarantee regulatory compliance, and it does not provide legal advice.

Whether a particular communication is a financial promotion, and which rules apply to it, is a question for a firm's compliance and legal teams rather than for a marketing tool. What a marketing-operations platform can do is narrower and concrete: make sure the documented review actually runs before anything is published, and preserve a complete, dated record that it took place, so the firm can answer questions about a promotion long after it ran.

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