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Blogs · July 2026

What does the FCA Consumer Duty mean for answering your customers?

It does not set a deadline. It sets an outcome. And an under-resourced phone line is named, in the FCA's own guidance, as a way firms cause harm.

The short answer: it does not give you a deadline to hit. There is no rule saying "answer within three minutes". What the Consumer Duty does is judge the outcome: your customers must get the support they need, without unreasonable barriers, and your after-sales service must not be visibly worse than your sales service. The FCA's own guidance names under-resourced helplines as a way firms cause harm. So the question is not "are we within the SLA". It is "can our customers actually reach us".

First, kill the myth

You will see suppliers claim the FCA requires you to answer calls within some number of minutes. It does not, and the FCA says so in plain words. Its finalised guidance states that the Duty:

"does not set rigid standards of how long a customer should wait to talk to an agent, how long a call should last, or how long an issue should take to be resolved"

The one hard clock in the rulebook is for complaints, not enquiries: under DISP, you must acknowledge a complaint promptly and send a final or other written response within eight weeks.

Anyone selling you technology on the basis of an FCA response-time rule is either mistaken or hoping you will not check.

What the Duty actually asks of you

Two rules do the work.

Consumer understanding (PRIN 2A.5.3R). Your communications must meet customers' information needs, be likely to be understood, and equip them to make properly informed decisions. This applies across all channels: spoken, written, digital, including social media, before, during and after the sale.

Consumer support (PRIN 2A.6.2R). Your support must meet customers' needs and ensure they "do not face unreasonable barriers (including unreasonable additional costs) during the lifecycle of a product". The FCA's guidance is explicit that those costs include delays, distress and inconvenience.

Sitting over both is Principle 12: act to deliver good outcomes for retail customers.

The FCA has already told you what bad looks like

This is the part worth reading twice, because it is the regulator describing your phone line. Its guidance names, as sources of harm:

  • "consistently poor or excessively slow service"
  • "under-resourced customer helplines, for example where firms disproportionately focus on pre-sales, over after-sales, support"
  • "phone systems, menus or webchats that are difficult to navigate"

And on the sales versus service gap, it could not be plainer:

"Customers should not be waiting significantly longer for their call to be answered in relation to a post-sale issue than to take out a product or service."

If a new customer gets through in thirty seconds and an existing one waits twenty minutes to make a claim, you do not have a staffing problem. You have a Consumer Duty problem.

And it has told you what to measure

The FCA expects firms to monitor, among other things:

  • first contact resolution rates and average time to resolution
  • speed to answer the telephone, average wait times, and call abandon rates
  • email and digital channel speed to answer

It also warns that a trend of customers hanging up before being answered "would suggest the firm is not providing an appropriate standard of support".

Are firms meeting it? Not really

The FCA's own Financial Lives research found that in 21% of contacts with a financial services provider, consumers found it difficult or impossible to get through or get an initial response. In 19% they struggled to find the right contact information in the first place.

The claims picture is worse. Which? found 20% of claimants had to chase for a status update, and 21% had to repeat information or resend documents they had already provided. Over a quarter said their initial contact left them no clearer than before.

And it ends up costing you. When the Financial Ombudsman looked at buildings insurance, claim delay was the second biggest cause of complaint, and delay complaints were upheld 57% of the time. Delay, more often than not, is judged to be the firm's fault.

Where an AI agent fits, honestly

It is not a compliance product, and you should be suspicious of anyone who sells it as one. It is a coverage product, and coverage is what the Duty is actually asking about.

It answers every call, email, chat and message, in your firm's voice, day and night, from your own knowledge base. It gives the same answer on every channel, which is exactly what PRIN 2A.5 is driving at. It captures the details, chases the documents, and gives you the monitoring data the FCA asks for as a by-product of doing the job.

And it does not give advice. It handles information and admin. Anything that needs an opinion, a recommendation or a judgement about what is right for that customer goes to a person at your firm. That line is not a marketing position, it is the regulatory one, and the next article covers exactly where it sits.

One thing to be clear about

Outsourcing does not move the responsibility. The FCA has said it is not writing a separate AI rulebook: AI is judged against the rules that already exist, and the authorised firm remains accountable for what is said in its name. If the agent says it, you said it. That is a reason to insist on a system you can audit, not a reason to avoid one.

Frequently asked questions

Does the FCA require firms to answer calls within a set time?

No. The Consumer Duty deliberately sets no rigid standard for wait times or resolution times. The only fixed deadline is for complaints: a final or other written response within eight weeks under DISP.

Can slow service breach the Consumer Duty?

It can. The FCA names "consistently poor or excessively slow service" and under-resourced helplines as ways firms cause harm, and it expects post-sale support to be no harder to reach than sales.

What should we be measuring?

The FCA points to first contact resolution, time to resolution, speed to answer, average wait times, call abandon rates and speed to answer on email and digital channels.

Does using AI create new regulatory obligations?

No. The FCA has said it is not making new AI rules. The existing ones apply, and your firm stays accountable for what the agent says.

Sources

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