The guidance being announced today will help ensure vulnerable consumers are treated fairly and achieve outcomes as good as other consumers. 'Protecting vulnerable consumers remains a key focus for us and given the impact of the Coronavirus pandemic, it is more important than ever that firms get this right. Nisha Arora, Director of Consumer & Retail Policy said: This needs to happen through the whole customer journey from product design through to customer engagement and communications. Not all people with these characteristics will suffer harm, but they may limit people’s ability to make reasonable decisions or put them at greater risk of mis-selling.įirms should understand what harms their customers are likely to be vulnerable to and ensure that customers in vulnerable circumstances can receive the same fair treatment and outcomes as other customers. The FCA’s recent Financial Lives research shows that 27.7 million adults in the UK now have characteristics of vulnerability such as poor health, experiencing negative life events, low financial resilience or low capability. People can find themselves in vulnerable circumstances at any time.

The guidance aims to drive improvements in the way firms treat vulnerable consumers so that they are consistently able to achieve outcomes that are as good as everybody else.

Guidance synonym