Plum - using an influencer massively in debt

[Iloveberets]

Plum are currently heavily running an ad which features Yasmin Camilla. She was £50k in debt a few years ago, this was then wiped (mostly by Klarna) after a social media campaign only for her to, again, end up £52k in debt last year.

Less than 2 months ago she was crying on the internet begging for money to pay her mortgage, and subsequently set up a go fund me where her followers donated.

Now, Plum are using her in their ad - talking about how she’s saving money for a holiday: when she’s £52k in debt and has managed money appallingly. Surely there needs to be rules around this kind of thing? It shouldn’t be the Wild West out there.

I tried plum savings account and didn't like the way it was linked into my current account and could monitor everything I spent - felt like private sector big brother.

She deletes a lot of posts - and she does a lot of lives with questionable content. One a month or so ago where she was sobbing that she couldn’t pay her mortgage. She asked her followers to donate - raised about £2.5k then said she didn’t need it for the mortgage and she’d just got a job earning £70k so she was putting it aside!

She also advertises Voy weight loss injections despite saying she hasn’t been able to take WLI due to a chronic stomach condition.

Monzo has had a full banking licence since 2017, protected by the FSCS scheme, etc - their only difference to a traditional bank is that they don't have branches, which isn't a requirement to be considered a bank. You can open ISAs, invest, business bank etc with them.

Their branding is a lot less staid than a bricks & mortar bank so I can only assume that's what you're referring to as 'juvenile', which seems like a silly reason to think they're not a real bank. It was part of their appeal, too - the reason they were so popular, so quickly, and especially with younger people, is that their app was light years ahead of other banks at the time and gave users lots of features that even now aren't available with some High Street banking apps, and their branding was a big part of making that obvious to their user base.

(Revolut does also have a banking licence, but with restrictions, that was granted last year, and is in the process of moving towards a full unrestricted licence. The regulator doesn't seem as sure about them.)

Ugh she was on Vanessa today talking about how unfair it is she’s in debt (she gave up her £70k a year job) and then blasted Step Change (the debt help charity) on her page. Plum, is this who you want to be associated with!!??

And Go Henry. And Voy!

Sadly there’s not much that can be done about shady posts asking for money or bs claims about personal circumstances in content like this. Vile as it is. I guess people can ask for donations for anything the like, foolish are those who actually donate.

Deliberately misleading or undisclosed paid posts can be reported to the Advertising Standards Authority though, who will come down on the advertiser and ‘influencer’ posting.

Yeah, with things like this Plum need to rethink their influencer strategy!

Those creepy non-banks are for people like her though so it’s right up her street. The people I know who are in tons of debt all have a Monzo or Revolut as well. They just seem a bit juvenile.*

What a bizarre statement!

Creepy non bank? What are you on about. It's a fully regulated organisation that provides financial services ( otherwise known as a bank)
What is creepy about that.
People that use Revolut and Monzo seem juvenile ?😆
Well my retired friends are juvenile, I dont think it's am, my Dh certainly isn't and yet we all use Monzo.
I can understand some concerns about Revolut but creepy is a weird adjective to use!