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Payday lender Sunny under ASA heat for TV ads again

by: Emma Lunn
  • 13/11/2014
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Payday lender Sunny under ASA heat for TV ads again
Payday loan company Think Finance, trading as Sunny.co.uk, has received another advert ban from the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) for failing to prominently show representative APRs on its TV adverts.

The lender has been told to stop showing its current TV advert after viewers complained.

It’s the second time the firm has had an ad banned this year.

The banned ad featured a voice-over suggesting borrowers apply to Sunny for loans up to £1,000 and claimed only Sunny offered the “No fee guarantee and the ability to choose your repayment schedule with Sunny Flexi-pay”.

Meanwhile the loan’s representative APR (RAPR) was shown on screen as well as a warning message about late payments.

Four viewers challenged whether the small print in the advert, which included the representative APR and warning message, was sufficiently clear.

During the course of the investigation, Think Finance (UK) changed its name to Elevate Credit International Ltd. The company maintained the ad complied with the super-imposed text guidance and the spirit of that guidance.

But the ASA found that the ad breached BCAP Code rules 1.3 (Compliance), 3.11 (Qualification) and 14.11 (Financial products).

In its ruling the ASA said: “We considered that information given in a voice-over would generally be seen by consumers as being more prominent than on-screen text at the bottom of the screen, and that on-screen text at the bottom of the screen was therefore unlikely to be sufficiently prominent if the triggering information was given in the voice-over.”

Five viewers complained to the ASA about a second Sunny advert which mocked payday loans and payday lenders. They said the RAPR wasn’t clear and that the ad trivialised the process of taking out a loan.

However these complaints were not upheld by the ASA.

In July Sunny was ordered to stop showing two of its television adverts which failed to meet the ASA’s rules on representative APRs.

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