This submission presents a potential transformation of the consumer protection landscape.
Following its first ever submission to the Parliament Education Committee UKSA has now been able to promote the same concept to the FCA. This is in reply to FCA consultation DP 23-5: ‘Advice Guidance Boundary Review: proposals for closing the advice gap’
We have a simpler, less rigid, more holistic model which integrates the needs of education and the demands of regulation. We want to move responsibility to the consumer while giving them the tools to exercise that responsibility, focussing on transparent information.
Our recommendations to the regulator are:
- That Government should explicitly adopt a target of enabling the whole population to be able to manage their money (putting consumers’ interests first).
- That this target should not be qualified by requirements to protect the interests of providers. A better financially educated and enabled population should mean that people are able to seek out less expensive solutions to their financial issues.
- That the main vehicle for meeting this target should be online learning mechanisms, initially an expansion and redirection of the MoneyHelper franchise to align with the principles exemplified by HonestMoneyNow.
- That this initiative be integrated with the initiatives currently being undertaken by government under the ‘education’ umbrella, so that what emerges is a genuine ‘cradle to grave’ learning process independent of commercial interests.
- That the subject should be described as ‘money management’
- That the initiative be overseen by a cross departmental committee covering an understanding of finance, learning, systems, and human psychology.
- That the focus of regulation be switched from control of advice to strengthening of understanding, executed as consumer tools become available.
Meanwhile we will continue to develop the HonestMoneyNow concept as an example of what is possible.
