Firms pivot from process to proof in Consumer Duty’s new era

The UK’s Consumer Duty regime is well underway, with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) now focusing on embedding it across sectors and improving client outcomes in 2026. Firms must now collect and act on data to deliver the best results for customers. But the issue for mid-sized wealth management and retirement companies is not compliance-related but structural, with firms needing to evidence, monitor, and respond to daily decisions; legacy modelling environments, spreadsheets, and manual data-management processes cannot support repeatable, outcome-focused evidence at scale. Even large firms’...