25 March 2026
If you are covering the FCA consultation paper on simplified advice, please see the following comment from Steve Gazard, chief distribution officer at Quilter:
"The FCA’s latest consultation on simplifying advice rules is an important step toward fixing a long‑standing gap in the system. Holistic advice remains the gold standard for anyone with multiple objectives or more complex arrangements, but many people do not need a full review for every decision and currently have no workable alternative. Too often they face a binary choice between paying for a comprehensive service that is disproportionate to the task or receiving no regulated support at all.
"Rather than creating a new simplified advice regime, the FCA is consolidating and streamlining the existing rulebook so firms can make better use of the flexibility already available. Reframing suitability around sufficient information and proportionality, and bringing the rules together into a single area, should help firms deliver simplified forms of advice where a customer’s needs are clear without running a full holistic process each time. That preserves holistic advice value by ensuring the most in‑depth service is focused where it genuinely adds long‑term benefit, while simpler needs can be met more efficiently.
"It is also helpful that the FCA is clarifying that advisers do not always need to justify the client’s level of knowledge‑and‑experience for mainstream recommendations, such as straightforward ISA or pension journeys, and that suitability reports should be concise, client‑facing documents rather than defensive compliance exercises. Combined with the shift from annual to periodic suitability reviews, anchored in fair value under Consumer Duty, the FCA is giving firms more scope to design advice services that reflect real‑world customer needs rather than legacy rule structures.
"Targeted Support, which is soon to be introduced will help people who are not yet ready for a personal recommendation build confidence and make basic decisions, while simplified advice offers the next step when a specific recommendation is appropriate. Together they create the continuum that has been missing: targeted support and simplified advice feeding naturally into holistic advice as customers’ financial lives become more complex, instead of today’s all‑or‑nothing set‑up.
"The success of this package ultimately depends on firms having confidence to operate within this more outcomes‑based framework. Clarifying “sufficient information” in the Handbook and providing new case studies is a good start, but alignment with the Ombudsman on how proportionate, simplified advice will be judged remains essential. Without that clarity, there remains a risk that firms continue to gold-plate processes to protect against hindsight risk and the benefits of simplification will be limited.
"Importantly, the FCA has chosen not to relax adviser‑charging rules or qualification requirements. That is the right approach. Consumers should expect that any personal recommendation, however focused, is delivered by a properly qualified adviser and paid for transparently. The opportunity here is not to cheapen advice but to use existing standards more intelligently so more people can access the right sort of help at the right time."
