By the end of July your Board will need to review and approve your firm’s first Consumer Duty Board report, setting out the results of your customer outcomes monitoring. Boards need to be equipped to assess your firm’s Consumer Duty compliance, decide on any remedial steps to take, and make any adjustments to your firm’s strategy and compliance framework.

Value is one of the most difficult areas of the Consumer Duty to implement, yet it has already become a key focus of the FCA’s initial interventions deploying this new regime. To stay a step ahead of these you’ll need to think laterally, with the FCA stressing the opportunity for you to learn from different industry areas especially as FCA work in different sectors proceeds at different paces.

It's time to start viewing your Consumer Duty implementation and compliance work through an interventions and enforcement lens.

The Duty converts previous guidance into binding - and more demanding - outcomes-based rules, so it's an ideal tool for the FCA in this context and one which it is already bringing to bear.

The Consumer Duty implementation deadline for closed products is 31 July 2024. That's closer than you think. Closed products implementation presents unique challenges - especially for firms with substantial historic books of business.

Your Consumer Duty work doesn’t stop at the end of July. Compliance will require ongoing effort and continuous improvement. The immediate challenge for firms post-July will be transitioning your regulatory change approach to a business-as-usual process and identifying areas for ongoing focus.

With the first implementation deadline mere weeks away, you'll likely shortly be convening - as the FCA guidance requires - a meeting for your Board to assure itself of Consumer Duty compliance, as well as to identify any potential weaknesses and decide on a plan for remedial action.

In this session we have set out key areas of your implementation activity for your Board to understand at this critical point, such as how you define "good outcomes", your monitoring arrangements and MI, the Champion's role, training and cultural change measures, and your roadmap for post-implementation continuous improvement as well as key future milestones.

The FCA’s Consumer Duty guidance requires firms to take account of behavioural biases – and to avoid exploiting them – across all the Consumer Duty requirements including the three cross-cutting rules and at least three of the four outcomes. Thinking on behavioural biases within financial services is relatively new and is developing rapidly. 

In this webinar we have given you practical explanations and actionable tips by bringing together our legal insight with the specialist expertise of Ruth Persian and Ellie Lugt from the Behavioural Insights Team. 

In this webinar we cover: 

• Recapped the FCA's Consumer Duty expectations for asset managers
• Explored key Consumer Duty interventions and enforcement risks for asset managers and how you could best preventatively reduce them for your business
• Set out key learnings from previous enforcement actions in the asset management space and explained how they may play out in the Consumer Duty context

Together we have explained:

• what behavioural biases are;
• what the rules and guidance require;
• how to use a behavioural insights approach to monitor and account for our customers’ behavioural biases (and our own);
• what a behavioural insights approach can look like in practice; and
• the role behavioural insights can play – in connection with other disciplines – within the firmwide cultural change that the FCA is looking to effect through the Duty.

To deliver good outcomes, the FCA's Consumer Duty requires firms to define their target market, identify customer groups within their target market that may experience divergent outcomes, and take steps to avoid foreseeable harm occurring.

This includes customers with characteristics of vulnerability - such customers are given special attention and emphasis throughout newly binding rules as well as guidance. In this session we have outlined the requirements and guidance relating to target markets and segmentation, outlined implementation uplifts for firms to consider, and explored in depth practical measures firms can take to meet vulnerable customers' needs.

In this session, we focused on the price and value outcome. For those parts of the industry not already required to undertake value assessments, this is unfamiliar and often challenging territory.

We explored the rules and guidance underpinning this outcome, outlined practical steps that firms can take to develop assessment frameworks and discussed the practicalities of information exchange. We have also looked at some of the lessons we could learn from the introduction of value assessments in the general insurance and funds sectors.

In our first monthly Consumer Duty webinar of 2023 we have focused on the Customer Understanding outcome. Joining our discussion was James Daley from Fairer Finance. 

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.

The first milestone for consumer duty implementation has now passed, and as 2022 draws to a close we are reflecting on recent conversations with clients about the Consumer Duty.

In this webinar we discussed 12 questions about the Duty that we think capture the concerns we are seeing across the market. These include issues around implementation, scoping, cross border chains and vulnerable customers. However, the Duty is likely to impact your business, there is something to interest you.

Consumer Duty implementation plans are due for Board sign-off by the end of October. Those plans will shortly be put into action - many firms will begin by considering in detail where and to what extent the new rules apply to their products and services. Firms that are proactive at this early stage will more confidently meet the FCA's deadline for implementation. To help you get off to the best start, watch our webinar.

We welcomed Ian Searle, FCA Head of Consumer Policy & Outcomes, to discuss the regulator’s objectives, its approach to supervision and expectations of firms now and post-implementation. Whilst not recorded, please read our reflections on the session below.

In this session we cover how the Consumer Duty applies to insurance products specifically and what’s changed from the existing rules. We examine how insurers might address key aspects of the four Consumer Duty outcomes including assessing fair value and testing and monitoring communications. we also explain the steps on an insurance firm’s typical implementation journey.

We can help you design and execute your regulatory change programme implementing the Duty, drawing on our insight into the FCA’s policy objectives and our understanding of organisational risk derived from assisting firms with enforcement investigations.

In this first instalment of our Consumer Duty Series we explained the overarching themes and focus of the Consumer Duty, explore when and how it will apply, examine its bolstered governance and individual accountability measures, and offer ideas for structuring for your implementation work.

We can help you design and execute your regulatory change programme implementing the Duty, drawing on our insight into the FCA’s policy objectives and our understanding of organisational risk derived from assisting firms with enforcement investigations.

In this first instalment of our Consumer Duty Series we explained the overarching themes and focus of the Consumer Duty, explore when and how it will apply, examine its bolstered governance and individual accountability measures, and offer ideas for structuring for your implementation work.

We can help you design and execute your regulatory change programme implementing the Duty, drawing on our insight into the FCA’s policy objectives and our understanding of organisational risk derived from assisting firms with enforcement investigations.

In this first instalment of our Consumer Duty Series we explained the overarching themes and focus of the Consumer Duty, explore when and how it will apply, examine its bolstered governance and individual accountability measures, and offer ideas for structuring for your implementation work.

We can help you design and execute your regulatory change programme implementing the Duty, drawing on our insight into the FCA’s policy objectives and our understanding of organisational risk derived from assisting firms with enforcement investigations.

In this first instalment of our Consumer Duty Series we explained the overarching themes and focus of the Consumer Duty, explore when and how it will apply, examine its bolstered governance and individual accountability measures, and offer ideas for structuring for your implementation work.