On 7 March 2025, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) published a new web page which sets out the findings from its review of firms’ approaches to the consumer support outcome of the Consumer Duty. The examples of good practices and areas of improvement are intended to help firms understand the FCA’s expectations.
In May 2024, the FCA carried out an initial quantitative survey of 407 retail financial services firms across the banking, insurance, payments, consumer finance, and investments sectors. It received 356 responses.
The FCA found that most firms were considering how the support they provide meets their customers’ needs.
However, areas for improvement included:
- Aligning support processes to the target market. The FCA expects all firms – regardless of their size and business models – to design their support services around the needs of their customers. This means understanding their customer base and identifying where there are specific needs. The FCA wants to see firms think innovatively to find new ways of serving customers well.
- Making post sale support as accessible and effective as pre-sale support. Firms should consider their end-to-end support journeys and not disproportionately focus on pre-sales over after-sales support.
- Embedding a culture within step of the duty. Some firms were unable to demonstrate substantive steps taken to drive cultural change in line with the Duty. Some firms failed to evidence appropriate training and other measures that enable their staff to understand their role in delivering good outcomes.
- Monitoring a broader range of outcomes about effective customer support. Some firms relied on transactional metrics, such as contact rates and wait times, or took a solely reactive approach in their monitoring, relying on customer feedback or complaints to identify issues. Where the customer support function is outsourced to a third-party provider, the FCA saw mixed progress of firms implementing effective MI oversight or information flow with the third-party firm.