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Latest News

18
Mar

Data Governance Is Now a Conduct Risk

March 18, 2026
How FCA and ICO Expectations Are Converging Data has traditionally been viewed as an operational or technical issue. Something for IT, legal or data protection teams to manage in the background. That position is no longer sustainable. Across UK financial services — and particularly within consumer credit — data governance has rapidly evolved into a...
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14
Mar

Consumer Duty 2026: The FCA’s Next Phase of Supervision Has Begun

March 14, 2026
The implementation phase of Consumer Duty is over. What we are seeing now is something more probing, more data-driven and significantly more outcomes-focused. For consumer credit firms, the message from the Financial Conduct Authority is clear: the FCA is no longer asking whether firms have implemented the Duty — it is asking whether customers are...
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11
Mar

Complaints, Redress and Reputation

March 11, 2026
Why FOS Trends Are Now a Board-Level Risk for Consumer Credit Firms Complaints are no longer just an operational metric. Across the consumer credit sector, the volume, value and complexity of complaints reaching the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) has shifted them firmly into the territory of board-level risk. For directors, compliance leaders and operations teams,...
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07
Mar

BNPL Regulation Is Coming Fast

March 7, 2026
Firms Should Already Be Preparing for FCA Authorisation The countdown to buy now pay later regulation has begun!! From July 2026, much of the UK’s BNPL market will move fully into the FCA regulatory perimeter. For firms currently offering, partnering on or planning to introduce BNPL products, this is not simply another regulatory update —...
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05
Mar

Guide to becoming authorised with the FCA for UK Lenders

March 5, 2026
Getting authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), whilst essential, is a significant milestone for any lending business, but the requirements for 2026 are more rigorous than they have ever been. Whilst it might be tempting to see the application as an easy-to-do formality, there is a contrast between a basic submission, which could be...
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28
Feb

Vulnerable Customers in 2026

February 28, 2026
What the FCA Is Expecting to See — and Where Firms Still Fall Short Vulnerability has been a regulatory priority for several years, but in 2026 the FCA’s expectations are sharper and far less forgiving. Firms are no longer judged on whether they have a vulnerability policy, but on whether vulnerable customers actually experience better...
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25
Feb

Supervision, Not Enforcement

February 25, 2026
How the FCA Is Quietly Turning Up the Heat When firms think about regulatory risk, enforcement still dominates the conversation. Fines, redress schemes and public censure feel tangible and immediate. In reality, however, the FCA’s most powerful lever in consumer credit today is not enforcement at all — it is supervision. For the Financial Conduct...
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22
Feb

Preparing for FCA Thematic Reviews in 2026

February 22, 2026
What Consumer Credit Firms Should Expect For many consumer credit firms, thematic reviews remain one of the least understood, and most disruptive, forms of FCA intervention. They rarely arrive with much warning, they cut across multiple parts of the business, and they often surface issues firms did not realise were connected. In 2026, thematic work...
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20
Feb

Why the FCA Is No Longer Accepting Framework-Only Compliance

February 20, 2026
For many consumer credit firms, the last few years have been dominated by policy work. New frameworks have been written, governance structures refreshed and compliance libraries expanded. On paper, many firms have never looked stronger. The FCA’s message in 2026 is clear: that phase is over. What matters now is not the quality of a...
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