ICAEW and ACCA marketing rules, explained

There is no separate marketing rulebook

This is the first thing to understand, and it catches people out. The ICAEW and ACCA do not publish a marketing code. Your website is governed by the same fundamental principles that govern everything else you do, which is stricter than a dedicated marketing code would be, not looser.

For ICAEW members the relevant provisions sit in the Code of Ethics under professional behaviour. ACCA members are covered by the equivalent provisions in the ACCA Rulebook. Both land in the same place: marketing must not bring the profession into disrepute, must not be false or misleading, and must not disparage others.

Alongside that sit two general regimes that apply to you as a business rather than as a professional: the CAP Code, enforced by the ASA, and consumer protection law, which since 2024 includes the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act.

The claims that get firms into trouble

Nearly every problem falls into one of four categories.

Unsubstantiated savings claims

"We save our clients thousands." "Cut your tax bill by up to 40%." "Guaranteed savings." These are the most common breach and the easiest to avoid. If you cannot evidence the claim for the general case, do not make it. A specific, evidenced, dated example is fine. A general promise is not.

Disparaging named competitors

Comparative advertising is not automatically prohibited, but the professional bodies take a dim view of anything that denigrates another firm, and the CAP Code requires comparisons to be verifiable and fair. "Unlike other local accountants who never answer the phone" is a bad sentence. "We respond to client emails within one working day" is a good one, and it makes the same point.

Misusing protected terms

"Chartered Accountant" and "Chartered Certified Accountant" are protected. So is "Registered Auditor". A firm cannot describe itself as chartered unless it meets the relevant body's requirements, and the rules on when a firm name may include those terms are more specific than most practitioners assume. If you are not certain your firm meets the test for the description on your homepage, check before your compliance visit does.

Implying regulated status you do not hold

Investment advice, insurance mediation and certain consumer credit activities are regulated by the FCA. Wording on a website that implies you provide regulated advice when you do not, or that blurs the line between generic guidance and a personal recommendation, is a real risk. Be explicit about what you do and do not do.

Testimonials and reviews, which changed in 2024

This is the area where the law moved most recently and where a lot of websites are now non-compliant without their owners realising.

The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 made fake reviews a banned practice outright, with penalties of up to 10% of global turnover. Submitting fake reviews, commissioning them, and publishing reviews without taking reasonable steps to verify they are genuine are all caught.

In practice, for a practice website:

• Every testimonial must be genuine and you must be able to substantiate it if asked.
• Keep written permission on file from each person quoted. An email saying "yes, happy for you to use that" is enough, but you need it.
• Do not write them yourself, not even as "examples", and not even if you think the sentiment is accurate.
• Attribute honestly. Shortened surnames are fine and common. Inventing a job title is not.
• Be careful with schema. Marking up reviews of a different entity as your organisation's is the self-serving review markup Google penalises, quite apart from the consumer law question.

If your firm has no reviews yet, the honest options are to ask real clients, to run a founding-client offer that generates genuine ones, or to convert the section into something else entirely. Writing five plausible quotes and attributing them to invented initials is the option that carries a turnover-based penalty.

The disclosures your website must carry

Four separate regimes require things on your site, and most practice websites miss at least one.

The cookie problem nobody mentions

PECR requires consent before non-essential cookies are set. Google Analytics is non-essential. A very large number of professional services websites load Analytics on page one and show a cookie banner that only appears afterwards, or worse, a banner with no reject option.

Done properly: the analytics script does not load at all until someone accepts, rejecting is as easy as accepting, and ignoring the banner counts as a rejection rather than consent. If your current site fails that test, it is a straightforward fix and worth doing before it becomes someone else's complaint.

Does this apply to AI-generated copy?

Entirely, and it is worth flagging because language models are enthusiastic about exactly the claims that breach these rules. Ask a model to write your homepage and there is a fair chance you get "save thousands on your tax bill" in the first paragraph.

Responsibility sits with you, not the tool. "The AI wrote it" is not a defence to a complaint, and the ICAEW principle of professional competence and due care applies to what you publish regardless of how it was produced.

A compliance pass for your website

1. Search your own site for "save", "guarantee", "best" and "cheapest". Read every result as though you had to evidence it.
2. Check every testimonial: is it real, do you have permission in writing, is the attribution accurate?
3. Check the footer for registered name, number, place of registration and registered office.
4. State your AML supervisor somewhere findable.
5. Check "Chartered" appears only where your firm genuinely qualifies.
6. Open the site in a private window and confirm no analytics cookie is set before you click accept.
7. Check that nothing implies FCA-regulated advice you do not provide.

This guide is general information about marketing a practice, not legal, regulatory or compliance advice. Rules change and the position depends on your firm's circumstances and which body supervises you. Check the current position with your professional body before acting on any of it.