Compliant Advertising, and a New Advertising Submission Form

Did you know there is always someone watching your marketing and advertising? State regulators are watching you. Competing agents are watching you. Ex-clients are watching you. When it comes to your advertising and training, are you confident that it won’t get you in trouble? Who you gonna call? National Life’s Ad Review Unit (ARU)!

The ARU is here to help with your advertising and training, so you can grow your business with confidence. As you probably know, much of what you use for advertising or training is required to be reviewed before it is used. This communication will help you if you are unsure of what needs to be reviewed, and how to get it reviewed.

What Requires Advertising Compliance Approval?

Examples of advertising/training materials include

• Website postings, web pages, web directory listings
• Social media with business content
• Marketing emails
• Printed or published materials
• Letters
• Brochures
• Newspaper advertisements
• Training or prospecting presentations

To submit materials for compliance review, please complete the *New!* Compliance Review Request Form found on our website under NLGroup Compliance/Advertising (note that there are two pages) and submit it, along with the materials for review, to AdReview@nationallife.com. Note that for social media review submissions (LinkedIn, Facebook business pages, etc.), no form is needed, you can just send the link for the page to AdReview@nationallife.com with a message asking us to review it.

Career and NLFC agents, please work with your agency to submit materials since they need to keep track of your advertising.

Once received, one of our reviewers will look at the material, and contact you with any questions, or changes necessary. If changes are necessary, we’ll ask you to send us a final copy before we give you an approval to begin using the material.

For more information on the advertising review process, please refer to National Life Group’s Compliance Manual located on the NLG website under NLGroup Compliance.

For specific questions regarding what needs to be submitted, you can email AdReview@nationallife.com, or call our main number at (802) 229-3129 and we’ll put you in touch with a reviewer.

New Advertising Submission Form

We’ve updated our submission form to work with a new database we are using. Most of the data you input into the form will be captured automatically by our database. Because of this, we ask that you complete the form on your computer, and do not use scanned or hand-written versions. New York agents – please note that there is also a new field asking you to estimate how many copies you will be distributing in NY of any marketing piece to comply with NY regulations.

New Tracking Number Format

You will also notice we are beginning to use a new numbering format to track advertising we review. This was formerly known as a TC number which stands for Tracking Control. New numbers will begin using “NLG” at the beginning of the number such as “NLG1001(0120)1”.

The numbers in parentheses are the month and date the piece was reviewed, and the final number represents how long the piece is approved for – 1 (1 year), 3 (3 years), or P (Perpetual). If there is no number at the end in most cases a piece is approved for a specific date or single use. Until we finish up all reviews in our old database, you may see either format when we send you edits.

Thank you for your business!

*Note to ESI registered representatives – there are some exceptions for correspondence and previously approved templates. Please refer to ESI’s Written Supervisory Procedures, or Field Notice 2014-12.

Other Resources

NLG Compliance Manual
Compliance Review Request form
General Advertising Guidelines
Guidelines for independent agents 
Guidelines for creating and submitting videos and podcasts 
List of previously approved and unapproved marketing systems