What the new Consumer Duty will mean for you and your wealth

24/05/2023

On 31 July 2023, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) will implement its new Consumer Duty, providing revised guidelines as to how financial firms are expected to treat their clients.

You may have read the article we published on this topic in August 2022, in which we discussed how we continuously review our service at Douglas White Financial Planning (DWFP) to ensure that we’re meeting your needs.

This certainly remains to be true now. But, as the date for when the Consumer Duty will come into effect fast approaches, we thought it might be useful for you to understand what’s included within the new guidelines.

So, find out more about what the implementation of the Consumer Duty means for financial firms, how it will affect you, and how we’ll be working at DWFP to make sure we’re always putting clients first.

The Consumer Duty provides updated rules for financial firms to follow

As the UK’s financial regulator, the FCA’s goal is to protect individuals when they work with financial firms. This is the purpose of the new Consumer Duty, redefining the expectations for firms operating in the UK, from the multinational banks to individual advice firms like us.

The new regulations include four key areas where clients and customers must now see positive outcomes when working with financial firms. The table below shows you these areas, and briefly explains how firms like us will be expected to behave:

Source: FCA

There will be no disruption to the service you receive

For us at DWFP, these outcomes are part and parcel of what we do. When you work with us, we always start with your financial goals, and then make recommendations accordingly.

This means we naturally:

  • Design our products and services around you
  • Ensure we offer you value in what we do
  • Provide communications that enhance your understanding of our service
  • Base our service around helping you to achieve your financial goals.

So, while these changes may mean we have to consider evolving or amending some of what we do, you can still be confident there will be little to no disruption to the service you receive as a result.

We remain well positioned to continue providing a service that revolves around you, your goals, and your needs.

We’ll continue to explore ways to improve what we do

Of course, we’ll continue to look at how we can continuously improve the work we do for you. As well as those outlined in the FCA’s Consumer Duty, we always consider other areas of our business that could affect how we manage your wealth.

We continuously ask ourselves important questions such as whether our service offers value to you, if we’re avoiding foreseeable harm, and where we can improve our offering even further.

These discussions are ongoing for us, looking at areas that could allow us to achieve these targets.

For example, as we often do, we’ve been reviewing the investment solutions that we offer. A lot of work was recently completed over whether or not to insource a discretionary fund manager (DFM) service to manage our investment portfolios in-house. Ultimately, this is something we’ve decided not to do for various reasons.

We’ve also undertaken a review of our in-house solutions, and we expect to announce a further evolution of this service in the near future.

While these examples are not directly as a result of the new Consumer Duty, they’re good indicators of the type of work we might do in future to ensure that we continue to provide a high-quality service that adds value to you.

Get in touch

If you’d like to find out more about how we’re reacting to the Consumer Duty, or you’d like to check in with your planner, then please do get in touch.

Email info@douglaswhiteltd.com or call 0151 345 6828 to speak to us today.

Please note

This blog is for general information only and does not constitute advice. The information is aimed at retail clients only.