Consumer Duty and Technology: What Your Firm Needs
37% of firms cite compliance as their biggest challenge. Consumer Duty has raised the bar — here's how the right technology makes it manageable.
The FCA's Consumer Duty has fundamentally changed the compliance landscape for advice firms. It's no longer enough to follow rules — firms must demonstrate they're delivering good outcomes for clients. 37% of advice firms cite compliance as their single biggest operational challenge, and Consumer Duty has only intensified that pressure. The requirements are clear: evidence that you're acting in clients' best interests, documented vulnerability assessments, ongoing monitoring of outcomes, and clear fee disclosure. The question is how you deliver this consistently across every client interaction without drowning in paperwork. Most firms are still doing it manually. Compliance officers review suitability reports after the fact, flagging issues that then need to be corrected and re-issued. Vulnerability assessments are inconsistent — dependent on individual adviser judgement with no systematic framework. Audit trails are scattered across emails, CRM notes, and filing systems. Technology can transform this from a burden into a background process. Automated compliance checking reviews every document against your firm's rules and FCA requirements in real-time — before it reaches the client, not after. Vulnerability indicators are flagged during meetings through AI analysis of conversation content, ensuring consistent assessment regardless of which adviser is present. Complete audit trails are generated automatically, documenting every interaction, recommendation, and client communication in one searchable system. Consumer Duty isn't going away. The firms that treat it as a technology problem rather than a people problem will spend less time on compliance while actually being more compliant.