Retail financial products - the 'other' portfolio letters

Further to our coverage of the portfolio letters on investment topics, we take a deep-dive into the FCA's thoughts on insurance, mortgages, consumer credit and finance, deposits, payment services and crowdfunding. The challenge for the industry and regulator is to ensure that people on the ground stop and actually read these documents, opines Adam Samuel.

Adam SamuelBA LLM DipPFS MCISI FCIArb Certs CII (MP&ER) Barrister and Attorney may be contacted atadamsamuel@aol.com.You can purchase Adam's latest book 'Compliance - a Short Book' at www.amazon.co.uk/Compliance-Short-Book-Adam-Samuel-ebook/dp/B0CTRYBN1J/. For links to where you can buy the second edition of 'Consumer Financial Services Complaints and Compensation', seewww.adamsamuel.com/writing.

The Financial Conduct Authority's portfolio letters represent a recent regulatory development of considerable importance to firms. Presented as 'Dear CEO' or 'Dear CEO/director' correspondence, they rose to prominence because of the Consumer Duty. Nevertheless, some of the 'Supervisory Correspondence' under which the regulator usually files these documents on its website pre-dates any such discussions and does not concern consumers. This produces an interesting mixed bag whose limits are hard to define.