The Consumer Duty – navigating the consumer understanding outcome

Thank you for joining us in our first monthly Consumer Duty webinar of 2023, where we have focused on the Customer Understanding outcome. Joining our discussion was James Daley from Fairer Finance. Fairer Finance has helped some of the UK's largest banks, building societies, and insurers to communicate clearly with their customers. It has a unique insight into how firms can structure communications to meet the needs of retail consumers. 

The FCA’s Consumer Duty is set to ‘go-live’ in just over six months. Unlike TCF, the Duty captures any firm with the ability to influence outcomes for retail customers, whether they have a direct contractual relationship with them or not. It will require a significant change of approach for in-scope firms – and may indirectly impact firms outside of its scope. 

In this session we have explored the rules and guidance around the customer understanding outcome, outlining practical steps that firms can take to improve the clarity of their communications and satisfy the FCA’s requirements on testing. We have also looked at some of the lessons we can learn from previous FCA enforcement action concerning customer communications.