EB Associates Group Limited – €163,800 Fine (United Kingdom, 2021)

EB Associates Group Limited (EBAG) is a financial advisors group. The ICO found that it "positively encouraged" its 'introducer appointed representatives' (IARs) to make call for "the purposes of direct marketing in relation to occupational pension schemes or personal pension schemes" by offering between £300 and £750 for each referral made to it after a call. The ICO first restated that Regulation 21B PECR requires that the entity making such direct marketing calls be an 'authorised person or a person who is the trustee or manager of an occupational pension scheme or a personal pension scheme'. It held that whilst EBAG would meet the criteria to be considered an authorised person, the IARs it instigated to make the calls did not. Further, neither of them had the valid consent of those who were called, or that they had an existing customer relationship with them, as required by Regulation 21B(2)(b) and 21B(3)(b) PECR. Indeed, they obtained the data to make these calls from six competition/offer websites. EBAG could not provide evidence of specific or freely given consent (per Article 4(11) GDPR), as individuals had only agreed to those websites' privacy policies. The ICO found that "between 11 January 2019 and 30 September 2019, EBAG instigated the use of a public electronic communications service for the purpose of making 107,003 unsolicited calls for the purposes of direct marketing in relation to occupational pension schemes or personal pension schemes contrary to regulation 21B of PECR." Thus, the ICO fined EB Associates Group Limited approximately €164,500 (GBP 140,000).