Finance & Fintech · Performance Marketing Case Study

52% Lower Cost Per Lead — Fully Compliant, Higher Quality

Trustline Finance was paying more every month for leads that compliance kept flagging for review. Here's how a compliance-first campaign rebuild cut cost per qualified lead in half while actually improving lead quality.

★★★★★5.0/5 4-month engagement Compliance-first performance marketing
−52%
lower cost per qualified lead
3.5x
more leads reaching disbursal stage
0
compliance disapprovals since rebuild
Finance & Fintech
Performance Marketing
Compliance-First Campaigns
Client

Trustline Finance

Digital lending NBFC, Chennai

Starting point

Rising CPL, recurring ad disapprovals

Broad targeting, non-compliant claims triggering platform flags

Engagement window

4 months

Ongoing performance marketing retainer

Services

Performance Marketing

Compliant ad workflows, lead-quality scoring

The challenge

Every Campaign Was One Flag Away from Getting Pulled

Trustline Finance's previous agency ran broad, generic lending ads with loose claims about approval odds and interest rates — the kind of copy that reads well until a platform's financial-services review team flags it. Campaigns were routinely paused mid-flight for compliance review, burning budget on interrupted delivery. Worse, the leads that did come through were largely unqualified: window-shoppers and rate-comparers who fell out at the KYC stage, driving cost per disbursed loan far higher than the dashboard's cost-per-lead number ever showed.

Recurring disapprovals and a high share of unqualified leads,
before this engagement began
01 — What we did

The Compliance-First Rebuild We Ran

1Week 1

Compliance Audit

Reviewed every live ad against financial-promotion guidelines and platform-specific lending-ad policies to find exactly what was triggering flags.

2Week 2

Compliant Creative Rebuild

Rewrote every claim to pass review on first submission — indicative rates, eligibility criteria and required disclosures, stated correctly from the start.

3Week 2–3

Lead-Quality Targeting

Narrowed targeting to income bands and intent signals that historically converted to disbursed loans, not just form fills.

4Week 3–4

Pre-Qualification Flow

Added an eligibility pre-check before the lead form, filtering out clearly ineligible applicants before they ever reached sales.

5Month 2+

Lead-Quality Scoring

Every lead scored against disbursal outcomes in the CRM, feeding back into which campaigns got more budget.

6Monthly

Compliance & Performance Reporting

Every report pairs cost-per-lead with cost-per-disbursed-loan and a compliance status check — never one number without the other.

i

Compliance and performance aren't in tension. Once creative stopped getting flagged, campaigns ran uninterrupted for the first time in over a year — steady delivery alone recovered a meaningful share of the cost improvement.

02 — Results

From Flagged Campaigns to a Trusted Lead Engine

Cost Per Lead
−52%
lower cost per qualified lead

Compliant creative and lead-quality targeting cut CPL while raising the share of leads that actually qualify.

Lead Quality
3.5x
more leads reaching disbursal

Pre-qualification and better targeting meant far fewer leads dropping out at the KYC stage.

Compliance
0
disapprovals since the rebuild

Every campaign has run uninterrupted, with zero compliance-related pauses in four months.

Lead Quality & Compliance
4 mo
Cost per lead
−52%
Disbursal rate
3.5x
Disapprovals
0
Cost per qualified lead, trending down month over month
Campaign Performance
Live
CampaignCost/Qualified Lead
Google Search — personal loans₹1,240 ₹610
Meta — pre-qualified audience₹960 ₹470
Meta — retargeting₹680 ₹340
Google Display₹1,510 ₹790
03 — In their words

What the CMO Says

★★★★★

"Our old ads kept getting flagged and pulled mid-campaign — we never knew what a real month of delivery even looked like. This is the first team that treated compliance as part of the strategy instead of an afterthought, and the cost-per-lead numbers followed."

SM
Sanjana Menon
CMO, Trustline Finance
Methodology

Cost-per-lead and disbursal-rate figures come from Google Ads, Meta Ads Manager and the client's loan-management system, tracing every lead through to disbursal outcome. Compliance status is logged per campaign at every platform review. Timeframe and starting baseline stated above, as with every case study we publish.

Next Step

Want Compliant Campaigns That Still Perform?

Tell us your product and lending category — we'll show you exactly where compliance risk is hiding in your current campaigns and what it would take to cut cost per qualified lead.

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