Almost two-thirds of brokers want more Consumer Duty information from financial providers, with the guidance set to launch at the end of the month, data from Hodge shows.
The specialist lender’s poll finds that 61% of brokers still want more advice from finance houses about approaches to the Financial Conduct Authority’s new rules on dealing with customers, which come into effect on 31 July.
The FCA’s new guidance applies to all of the UK’s 60,000 regulated financial firms, including the mortgage industry’s roughly 100 lenders and 18,000 brokers and broker firms.
The regulator says the aim of the wide-ranging guidance is to set out “higher and clearer standards of consumer protection across financial services”.
The lender’s survey contacted 150 brokers to ask how ready the intermediary market is for the change in regulation.
Nearly half of brokers, or 49%, said they didn’t think the new rules would change the products and services they offered.
But 25% say it will change the way they work, while 4% of intermediaries say they had employed an expert advisor to help with products that are new to them.
To come to terms with the new guidelines, 75% of brokers have learnt about them by reading reports, while 59% have also enrolled on continuing professional development courses, and 50% have attended or are attending webinars to learn more about the rules.
Overall, 86% of intermediaries are confident about their awareness of Consumer Duty, and 73% add that they are “fully prepared” for the guidance.
Hodge business development director Emma Graham says: “With the Consumer Duty deadline just a few weeks away, it is good to know that our intermediary colleagues feel prepared for these big changes.
“Many have said to us anecdotally that Consumer Duty just feels like an extension of [the FCA’s] Treating Customers Fairly [principal], while others are concerned about the extra administrative burden Consumer Duty puts upon them, especially those in smaller companies or independent financial advisers.”
Earlier this year, Hodge launched a Consumer Duty knowledge hub for brokers.
