Weaving the Consumer Duty into the fabric of your firm

Just ten months remain to implement whatthe regulator describes as “a significant shift in culture and behaviour”.Firms must act now to demonstrate their consideration of consumer outcomesacross all stages of product manufacturing, distribution, service execution andcustomer support, writes Simon Goryl.

Simon Goryl (www.bovill.com/person/simon-goryl/) is aconsultant in Bovill’s Conduct and Controls team, where he provides bothtechnical regulatory advice and specialist operational support to clientsacross financial services. Bovill (www.bovill.com) havedeveloped a Consumer Duty compliance tool kit to help firms assess andbenchmark their maturity against the new standards.

If you are a regulated firm you will need toshow you are meeting the new ‘Consumer Duty’ requirements by April 2023. Thesecond consultation paper, published in December 2021, detailed some rulechanges, but the regulator is looking for much more than ‘tick-box’ compliance.Firms must demonstrate that consumer outcomes are considered across the entire‘distribution chain’, so compliance is unlikely to be straightforward. Thelevel of impact and scale of change will be different for every firm. Reviewingthe expectations against each element of your business will give you a clearpicture of what you need to get done.