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Blogs · July 2026

What should an FCA-regulated broker expect from an AI agent supplier?

You stay accountable for whatever the agent says in your name. So buy it like a regulated firm: permissions, approved content, escalation, and a full record of every word.

The short answer: buy it the way you would bring on any other party that speaks to your customers. The FCA has confirmed it is not writing a separate AI rulebook, so the agent is judged against the rules you already live under, and your firm stays accountable for whatever it says in your name. That single fact should shape the whole purchase. Ask about permissions, approved content, escalation and the audit trail before you ask about the voice.

Start from accountability, not features

In April 2026 the FCA's chief data, information and intelligence officer put it bluntly: "on AI policy: no new rules." The regulator will publish examples of good and poor practice instead.

That is good news and a warning at the same time. There is no new regime to comply with. There is also nowhere to hide: Consumer Duty, systems and controls, and senior manager accountability all apply exactly as they did before. Outsourcing the conversation does not outsource the responsibility.

So the question is never "is the AI clever". It is "can I stand behind everything it said".

The seven things to demand

1. A written line between information and advice

The FCA draws it: advice "requires an element of opinion" and amounts to "a recommendation as to a course of action", while information "involves statements of facts or figures". Your supplier must be able to state, in one sentence, that the agent gives the second and never the first.

What good looks like: it answers renewal dates, cover, excesses and process. It never says a customer should switch, never says an add-on suits them, and never ranks options in a way that steers the choice.

2. Approved content, and only approved content

Every answer must come from a knowledge base you own and sign off. An agent that answers from the open internet will eventually tell a customer something about your firm that is not true.

What good looks like: one knowledge base, sourced from your documents, editable by you, with a record of who approved what.

3. A defined escalation route

Handing to a human is the design, not the failure. You decide what gets passed on, to whom, and how fast.

What good looks like: if the customer asks for a person, they get a person. If the question needs an opinion, it goes to an adviser. If the agent is unsure, it says so rather than guessing.

4. Clarity on where the regulated perimeter sits

Ask specifically about claims. Assisting in the administration and performance of an insurance contract is itself a regulated activity when carried on for a policyholder, and FCA guidance says notifying a claim and providing evidence to support it is "likely to amount to" exactly that.

What good looks like: a supplier who knows this, and an agent that operates inside your firm's permissions and process rather than around them. A vendor who has never heard of it is telling you something.

5. A complete, readable record

You are accountable for every word. If you cannot read it back, you cannot supervise it.

What good looks like: full transcripts of every conversation on every channel, searchable, with the outcome. This is also what lets you evidence good outcomes rather than assert them.

6. The monitoring data the FCA already asks for

The regulator expects firms to watch first contact resolution and time to resolution, speed to answer the phone, average wait times, call abandon rates, and speed to answer on email and digital channels. It warns that customers hanging up before being answered "would suggest the firm is not providing an appropriate standard of support".

What good looks like: the agent produces that data as a by-product of doing the work, across every channel, in one place.

7. An honest answer about what it will not fix

It will not make you compliant. It will not advise. It will not rescue a broken claims process.

What good looks like: a supplier who says so.

The problem you are actually buying against

Not advice. Coverage and chasing.

Customers cannot get through: 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. And once a claim is running, the service failure is administrative: 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.

That has consequences. When the Financial Ombudsman examined buildings insurance, claim delay complaints were upheld 57% of the time. Delay is judged to be the firm's fault more often than not.

Meanwhile your people are buried. Regulation costs brokers around 3.3% of every premium collected, almost all of it indirect, in compliance staff and time, and BIBA told a House of Lords committee that this burden "disproportionately falls onto the shoulders of brokers themselves, reducing the time and capacity to serve customers".

None of that work needs an adviser. It needs someone to pick up, know the facts, and do what they said they would do.

What about an answering service?

A fair question, and for low volumes a live answering service is a perfectly respectable backstop. A human voice at a difficult moment counts for something.

The limit is that it cannot answer. It does not know when the policy renews or which document you are waiting on, so it takes a message and the work returns to your desk. It also gives you no audit trail worth the name, which for a regulated firm is not a small omission.

Frequently asked questions

Are there new FCA rules for AI?

No. In April 2026 the FCA said plainly there would be "no new rules" on AI policy, and that it would publish examples of good and poor practice instead. The existing rules apply.

Who is accountable if the AI says the wrong thing?

Your firm. Outsourcing the conversation does not outsource the responsibility, which is why the audit trail and the approved knowledge base matter more than the demo.

Can it give advice or recommend a policy?

No. That needs an adviser and a suitability process. It gives facts and figures and hands over.

Can it handle first notification of loss?

It can capture and pass on claim details inside your firm's permissions and process. Notifying a claim and supporting it with evidence is a regulated activity in its own right.

Sources

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