The Financial Conduct Authority has set out plans to streamline its guidelines and lean extra closely on its wide-ranging Consumer Duty pointers.
The City watchdog says: “We are counting on the Duty as a lot as attainable quite than creating new prescriptive guidelines.
“So, embedding the Duty effectively throughout sectors is important as it’s going to assist make sure that shoppers are supported and can assist keep away from the necessity for future prescriptive regulation.”
The Consumer Duty, launched in July 2023, covers the entire of the UK’s 60,000 regulated monetary companies, together with the mortgage business’s roughly 100 lenders and 18,000 brokers and dealer companies.
The FCA says: “We recognise totally different companies face totally different challenges. We need companies to take an method that’s proportionate to their measurement and to the actions they undertake. “Where acceptable, we’ll set out totally different approaches smaller companies might take.
The regulator has set out 4 precedence areas for review of the Consumer Duty over the course of this 12 months and 2026.
Review of services and products consequence — How companies are designing services and products to meet buyer wants, together with these with traits of vulnerability
Review of companies’ approaches to outcomes monitoring — How companies are responding to our outcomes monitoring necessities
Review of companies’ buyer journey design — Looking on the design and supply of companies’ buyer journeys to guarantee clients’ wants are met, with a selected concentrate on how companies apply friction all through the journey
Review of the buyer understanding consequence — How companies’ communications are serving to shoppers make knowledgeable selections
Within these areas, the physique says it’s going to additionally have a look at the honest worth of small enterprise present accounts.
It will examine: “How small enterprise banking companies’ present accounts are complying with the value and worth, and shopper understanding outcomes.
“We’re reviewing responses and goal to feed again to companies concerned by the tip of 2025.”
The regulator provides that it desires “to perceive how companies are enhancing shopper outcomes, we intend to perform a handful of multi-firm tasks to have a look at how the Duty is being embedded throughout sectors.
“We could ask for knowledge, however solely after we want it. And we’ll provide suggestions the place companies need assistance with implementation.”
The FCA, like all monetary watchdogs, have been underneath strain to cut pink tape following a Mansion House speech by Chancellor Rachel Reeves final November, the place she mentioned that easing regulatory burdens on companies was an crucial to increase UK progress.
