Adline

All states · Filled 2026-09-17

Illinois mortgage advertising rules

Reference only

Adline flags phrases that match cited rules. It does not certify that Illinois marketing is compliant. We flag and cite. We never certify. This is not legal advice. Whether a rule reaches you depends on your license type. Federal Reg Z and Reg N still apply.

Reference only. Illinois rules are written down here. The engine does not scan for them yet. The engine cites Washington, Arizona, and Idaho only.

Source caveat: ilga.gov (the official General Assembly and JCAR administrative-code host) could not be fetched from this environment — every attempt failed TLS certificate verification, including the robots.txt pre-fetch. The Illinois primary text below was retrieved from Cornell LII and Justia, both faithful reproductions but SECONDARY. Recommend re-verifying all Illinois citations against ilga.gov before publication.

Regulating agency

Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation (IDFPR), Division of Banking

Last verified 2026-09-17.

Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation (IDFPR), Division of Banking. Residential Finance. https://idfpr.illinois.gov/banks/resfin.html

NMLS and license display: Conjunctive and disjunctive elements.

Governing statute and administrative code

Last verified 2026-09-17.

  • Statute Residential Mortgage License Act of 1987, 205 ILCS 635.
  • Regulation 38 Ill. Adm. Code Part 1050, Subpart H. ADVERTISING (§§ 1050.910–1050.950). Part index: https://www.law.cornell.edu/regulations/illinois/title-38/part-1050
  • Two-regime note: Illinois channels essentially all residential mortgage activity through the RMLA; 38 Ill. Adm. Code 1050.910 bars *anyone* other than an RMLA licensee or a §1-4(d)-exempt entity from advertising such activity. Illinois's separate consumer-lender statute is the Consumer Installment Loan Act (205 ILCS 670). NOT VERIFIED — Did not retrieve CILA advertising provisions.

License and NMLS ID display

Verified

Regulation. Guidance is not law.

Last verified 2026-09-17.

Regulation 38 Ill. Adm. Code 1050.940 (Requirements). https://www.law.cornell.edu/regulations/illinois/Ill-Admin-Code-tit-38-SS-1050.940

"Any advertisement appearing in Illinois by a licensee regarding residential mortgage loans, whether via electronic or print media, including mailings to individual potential residential mortgage loan customers, shall include, in a manner that is clear and conspicuous to the consumer: a) The NMLS Consumer Access homepage (www.nmlsconsumeraccess.org). For electronic media, the licensee shall use the phrase 'For licensing information, go to: www.nmlsconsumeraccess.org. b) The NMLS Unique Identifier of the licensee. If a Mortgage Loan Or[i]ginator (MLO) is advertised, the licensee must include its MLO employee's individual NMLS Unique Ind[e]ntifier, in addition to the licensee's NMLS Unique Ind[e]ntifier."

Conjunctive/disjunctive: CONJUNCTIVE. Both (a) and (b) are required in every ad. And within (b) a second conjunctive element triggers whenever an individual MLO is named or pictured: the company ID and the MLO's ID. For electronic media the regulation prescribes a specific phrase. "For licensing information, go to: www.nmlsconsumeraccess.org". not merely the URL. Illinois is one of the strictest states in this batch on ad legends.

*(Typographical note: "Orignator," "Indentifier" appear as misspellings in the codified text as reproduced; quoted above with bracketed corrections.)*

Prohibited claims

Verified

Statute. Guidance is not law.

Last verified 2026-09-17.

Regulation 38 Ill. Adm. Code 1050.950. https://www.law.cornell.edu/regulations/illinois/Ill-Admin-Code-tit-38-SS-1050.950

"Advertisements by licensees shall not be false, misleading or deceptive. Examples of prohibited advertising include but are not limited to the following: a) No advertisement regarding residential mortgage lending or brokering may indicate or imply that interest rates or charges for loans are in any way 'recommended', 'approved', 'set' or 'established' by the State or the Act; b) The NMLS Unique Identifier of the licensee shall not appear in any advertisement relating to activities other than residential mortgage lending or brokering, unless wording relating to the licensee's residential mortgage services also appears in the such advertisements and in prominence equal to or greater than the language regarding its other activities."

Statute 205 ILCS 635/3-3 (Advertising) (via Justia, SECONDARY):

"Advertising for loans transacted under this Act may not be false, misleading, or deceptive." "No entity whose activities are regulated under this Act may advertise in any manner so as to indicate or imply that its interest rates or charges for loans are in any way 'recommended', 'approved', 'set', or 'established' by the State or by this Act."

Statute 205 ILCS 635/1-3(b) (via Justia, SECONDARY). unlicensed-advertising ban:

"No person, partnership, association, corporation, or other entity except a licensee under this Act or an entity exempt from licensing pursuant to Section 1-4, subsection (d), of this Act shall do any business under any name or title, or circulate or use any advertising or make any representation or give any information to any person, which indicates or reasonably implies activity within the scope of this Act."

What it attaches to: 1050.950(a) / 3-3 attach specifically to rates or charges and to implied *state* endorsement. not a general superlative ban. There is no Illinois ban on the words "lowest," "best," "cheapest," "guaranteed," "pre-approved," "free," "no cost," or on "government" as such; those are reached only via the general false/misleading/deceptive standard.

Regulation 1050.930 (Compliance with Other Laws) additionally imports the Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act [815 ILCS 505] and ECOA/TILA into every advertisement. meaning an ad violation can be charged simultaneously as a state UDAP violation.

Rate advertising

None found

Regulation. Guidance is not law.

Last verified 2026-09-17.

None found as a distinct Illinois APR, lock-term, or "rates subject to change" overlay. Subpart H (38 Ill. Adm. Code 1050.910–1050.950) was reviewed in full. Rate advertising is reached by 1050.950(a) and 205 ILCS 635/3-3 (state-endorsement ban on rates or charges) and by 1050.930 importing TILA. No Illinois-specific APR-prominence, lock-term, or "rates subject to change" mandate was located in that subpart.

Ad filing, prior approval, retention

None found

Statute. Guidance is not law.

Last verified 2026-09-17.

No filing or prior-approval requirement located. Regulation 38 Ill. Adm. Code 1050.1176(a) (record retention): "Pursuant to Section 2-4(c) of the Act, each licensee shall retain all records prepared or received in the course of its residential mortgage business for 36 months." Advertisements are not named; the phrase "all records prepared … in the course of its residential mortgage business" is broad enough to be read to include them, but Illinois does not have an Iowa-/Kansas-style express advertising-copy retention rule. Treat a 36-month ad archive as the conservative position. Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/regulations/illinois/IL-Admin-Code-38-1050-1176

Social media and character-limited media

Verified

Regulation. Guidance is not law.

Last verified 2026-09-17.

1050.940 expressly covers "electronic … media" and prescribes different wording for it. 1050.920(a) defines an advertisement as "any message … conveyed in any format, including, but not limited to, the Internet, and attempting to induce, directly or indirectly, any person to enter into a residential mortgage loan or residential mortgage loan brokerage agreement." 1050.920(b). the novelty-item carve-out: "Small items bearing only the name, address and telephone number of the distributing entity … Examples of these items are pencils, pens, buttons, pins, pocket calendars, and balloons. Business cards shall be considered an advertisement." No character-limited / abbreviated-disclosure accommodation exists in Illinois. A licensee posting on a character-limited platform must still carry the full conjunctive legend under 1050.940. Illinois offers no Maryland-style profile-page substitute. This is a live compliance trap. Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/regulations/illinois/Ill-Admin-Code-tit-38-SS-1050.920

Anything unusual

Last verified 2026-09-17.

  • Business cards are advertisements (1050.920(b)). so a business card must carry the NMLS Consumer Access reference and the company's NMLS ID and (if the MLO is named) the MLO's ID.
  • 1050.950(b) is a reverse-disclosure rule and is easy to miss: a licensee may not put its NMLS ID in an ad for its *non-mortgage* lines unless mortgage services are also mentioned with equal or greater prominence. A bank-affiliate or multi-line firm that puts "NMLS #12345" in a footer across all marketing violates this.
  • 1050.910 makes it a violation for any non-licensee to circulate advertising that "reasonably implies activity involving the making, servicing or brokering of loans secured by residential real estate located in Illinois". reaches lead generators and unlicensed marketing affiliates.

Penalties

Verified

Statute. Guidance is not law.

Last verified 2026-09-17.

205 ILCS 635/4-5(h)(5) [STATUTE] [OFFICIAL. ilga.gov], retrieved 2026-09-16:

"Imposition of a fine not to exceed $25,000 for each count of separate offense, provided that a fine may be imposed not to exceed $75,000 for each separate count of offense of paragraph (2) of subsection (i) of this Section"

Subsection (i)(2) is "Fraud, misrepresentation, deceit or negligence in any mortgage financing transaction." Subsection (i)(17) is "Failure to comply with or violation of any provision of this Act." Advertising violations can run through (i)(17). Where they are fraud or misrepresentation they can run through (i)(2) at the higher cap.

Sources

Sources

Last verified 2026-09-17. Official means the legislature, the official administrative-code publisher, or the regulator. Reproduction is not the official publisher.