Consumer Duty (FCA)

Definition

The Consumer Duty is the FCA's overarching requirement that firms act to deliver good outcomes for retail customers. Introduced through Principle 12 and the rules in PRIN 2A, it came into force on 31 July 2023 for open products and services and on 31 July 2024 for closed books. It rests on three cross-cutting rules (act in good faith, avoid foreseeable harm, enable and support customers to pursue their financial objectives) and four outcomes: products and services, price and value, consumer understanding, and consumer support. Firms must monitor and evidence these outcomes, and boards must review an annual report on them. For insurance brokers, the Duty goes further than Treating Customers Fairly: it asks for data showing that clients understand what they buy and can get help, make changes or cancel as easily as they can purchase.

What you need to know

The Duty binds FCA-regulated firms, including brokers placing business for retail and small-business customers, and it reaches along the distribution chain: a wholesale broker or MGA must consider the outcomes of end customers it never meets. Irish brokers fall under the Central Bank of Ireland's Consumer Protection Code instead, and EU brokers under IDD and national rules, which pursue similar aims through documentation rather than outcome monitoring.

For a brokerage that uses WhatsApp, two outcomes dominate. Consumer understanding requires communications that are clear, tested and tailored to the audience, including customers with characteristics of vulnerability; a renewal message that buries a price rise or a coverage change fails that test. Consumer support requires that a client can reach the firm to ask a question, claim or cancel as easily as to buy, without unreasonable delay or friction, and that the firm can show response times and outcomes. Client conversations scattered across personal phones cannot produce that evidence.

Record-keeping under SYSC and the Duty's monitoring expectations push brokers towards a shared, firm-owned channel. ORIS provides the shared WhatsApp inbox with full history per customer, visible response times, AI classification of incoming requests so that cancellations and complaints are not missed, and CSV export to feed the outcomes dashboard the board reviews. Our guide to a shared WhatsApp inbox under Consumer Duty sets out the workflow, and the compliance hub covers related rules.

Concrete example

A Bristol brokerage receives a WhatsApp message from a sole trader asking to cancel a commercial combined policy mid-term. Under the Duty, the request must be as easy as the purchase: the message is assigned in the shared inbox, the handler replies the same day with the steps, the refund basis and the effective date, and the whole exchange is retained as evidence for the firm's annual Consumer Duty report.