Prolix papers on the Consumer Duty

"Of making many books there is no end," sighed the writer of Ecclesiastes. Adam Samuel fears that the regulator's well-intentioned elaborations on applying the Consumer Duty in various contexts could engender a lot of compliance verbiage without significantly improving consumer outcomes.

Adam Samuel BA LLM DipPFS MCISI FCIArb Certs CII (MP&ER) Barrister and Attorney may be contacted at adamsamuel@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', see www.adamsamuel.com/writing.

When the Financial Conduct Authority introduced the Consumer Duty, it accepted that the copious words in FG22/5 and the new PRIN 2A would remain just that without effective enforcement. Two years later, a new threat has emerged. The regulator has spent much of the summer and now autumn of 2024 flooding firms with more regulatory writing on consumer material than any compliance person can properly digest.