Today the FCA has published a Consumer Duty press release, the much anticipated Policy Statement PS22/9 and final Guidance FG22/5 on it’s website.
The Consumer Duty sets higher and more defined standards of consumer protection across financial services sectors and requires firms to put their customers’ needs first.
The Duty is built upon a customer-centric foundation and the overarching principle that ‘a firm must act to deliver good outcomes for retail customers’; including new rules which firms will have to follow. The Duty will mean that consumers should receive clear communications they can understand, products and services that truly meet their needs and offer fair value, and get the customer support they need when they need it.
The Policy Statement and finalised Guidance provide clarity on the FCA’s expectations of firms to concentrate on what their customers need; the FCA expects this will lead to more flexibility for firms to compete and innovate in the interests of consumers.
The Duty forms part of the FCA’s transformation toward becoming a more assertive and data-led regulator. With firms assessing how they are meeting their customers’ needs, the FCA believe they will be able to quickly identify practices that do not deliver the right outcomes for consumers and take appropriate action before practices become entrenched that lead to harm arising as a market norm.
Perhaps, though, the only way the FCA will “…be able to quickly identify practices that don’t deliver the right outcomes…” is if they actually ask firms for metrics, data and information about how they are assessing that they are meeting their customers’ needs. This may lead to more of the emerging trend of follow-up e-mails and information requests such as one issued recently, following up on the GI Intermediaries Portfolio Letter.
Firms will have 12 months to implement the new rules for all new and existing products and services that are currently on sale. The rules will be extended to closed book products 12 months later, to give firms more time to align these older products with the new standards. It will be interesting to see which definition of a ‘closed book’ the FCA employs, particularly taking into consideration the words here “…that are no longer on sale…”; this maybe indicates an actual ‘closed book’.
The FCA will work with firms during the implementation period, including hosting a series of industry events, to ensure that firms are implementing the Duty effectively and in line with the FCA’s expectations.
For further details on this, or any other compliance-related topic, contact our expert team on 01925 767888, or email helpline@ukgigroup.com