Since July 2023, the FCA has expected firms serving retail customers to deliver good outcomes for them. The regulator has been clear about what it can do when those outcomes do not materialise, and about what it expects firms to be able to show.
What the rule requires
The Consumer Duty (PRIN 2A in the FCA Handbook) sets out a Consumer Principle: firms must act to deliver good outcomes for retail customers. Beneath that sit three cross-cutting rules - act in good faith, avoid causing foreseeable harm, and enable customers to pursue their financial objectives - and four specific outcomes:
- Products and services that meet customer needs.
- Price and value that is fair.
- Consumer understanding, through clear and honest communications.
- Consumer support, so customers can use products as expected and get help when they cannot.
Every firm in the retail distribution chain has to be able to show that those four outcomes hold for its customers, and that customers in vulnerable circumstances in particular are not disadvantaged.
What happens if you do not comply
The FCA's usual enforcement toolkit applies. The regulator can:
- Publish a public censure - a statement that a firm has breached its rules. The reputational damage can outweigh any direct financial cost.
- Impose financial penalties, which are unlimited.
- Restrict a firm's permissions, or require a skilled person review under section 166 of the Financial Services and Markets Act, which the firm pays for whatever is found.
- Take action against individuals under the Senior Managers and Certification Regime, including fines and prohibitions.
The secondary harm is often larger than the primary action. Withdrawn distribution agreements, more complaints to the Financial Ombudsman Service, media coverage that affects new customers, and the internal cost of remediation all stack on top.
The evidence problem
The FCA does not expect perfection. It does expect firms to show that they have thought systematically about customer outcomes, and that they have evidence to back it up.
That last word is the one most teams underestimate. If a regulator asks, the question is not "is your website good?" It is "show us how you know it is good." Most firms struggle here. UX feedback lives in research notes that nobody opens after a sprint kickoff. Accessibility audits happen once, produce a PDF, and gather digital dust. Customer support tickets are anecdotes, not data.
Without documented, repeated evidence of the work, "we tried" does not land.
How UXDuty produces the evidence
UXDuty is built around the evidence problem, in four steps:
- Audit. UXDuty scans your website, a sample of its pages or the whole site, and reads each page against the four Consumer Duty outcomes. Every finding quotes the page, shows a screenshot with the text outlined, and cites the PRIN 2A rule it sits against.
- Review. Your team verifies each finding, or dismisses it with a reason. Findings stay awaiting review until a person agrees, and each decision is recorded.
- Resolve. After you fix the page, UXDuty checks it again. A finding is marked resolved once the evidence has gone from the page, and if someone resolves it by hand, the record says so.
- Track the trend. Rerun the audit whenever the site changes. Every run is kept, so the trend chart shows your findings falling over time, and the PDF report lists the findings that have been verified or resolved.
That is the record a regulator asks for: here is the finding we surfaced, here is who verified it, here is when we resolved it, and here is the later run that confirms the fix held. It is a continuous loop with a paper trail, rather than a one-time audit.
Because AI reads each page, expect small differences between runs. The reliable signal is the trend, not an exact finding count.
The bottom line
Consumer Duty is not going away, and the FCA keeps collecting more outcomes data from the firms it supervises. Firms that wait to be told what is wrong will spend a lot more later, on the remediation and on the regulatory cost. Firms that build evidence into their routine will have an answer ready when the question comes.
Back to resources