A plea for fresh thinking

When The Wisdom Council launched our Yes She Can campaign in 2018 to unpick the gender investing gap, an FCA team member looked aghast at the idea that we might be encouraging women to take more ‘risk’ with their savings. Investing was seen as somehow beyond the risk appetite of many customers, especially women. We […]

Embedding tried and tested principles into your Consumer Understanding programme

During the work undertaken for Consumer Duty, we’ve been aware of the many different teams write for financial services customers. It isn’t just a marketing function – middle and back office teams often lead too. This means it can be difficult to step back and see what the common pitfalls are for your firm’s communications […]

Consumer Duty – our perceptions of an industry working hard to comply

As July’s Consumer Duty deadline approaches, firms are looking to move from project delivery to incorporating the Duty into their business as usual. Albeit, while ploughing ahead with this transition, firms are still grappling with exactly what is expected of them by the regulator. Based on our current slew of Consumer Duty projects, our events, […]

Prioritisation and proportionality for Consumer Duty

As firms started the year grappling with internal action plans aimed at meeting the impending Consumer Duty deadlines, we held a webinar that provided insight on The Investment Association’s thinking and talked about some of the practical challenges firms face – including the thorny issue of Consumer Understanding, which runs through every aspect of the […]

Is the Consumer Duty really so new?​

We look at the latest iteration of the FCA’s new Consumer Duty and consider whether firms will need to think and act differently once it is implemented. Not a huge amount has changed in the latest iteration of the FCA’s new Consumer Duty proposals, though the draft guidance gives a real flavour of how important […]