Retirement income advice review fails nearly half of files

A deep dive into retirement income advice by the Financial Conduct Authority has exposed numerous concerns - in particular, an appalling standard of record-keeping. Advisers need to focus not only on the acquisition of technical knowledge, but also on compliance, urges Adam Samuel.

Adam SamuelBA LLM DipPFS MCISI FCIArb Certs CII (MP&ER) Barrister and Attorney may be contacted atadamsamuel@aol.com.You can purchase Adam's latest book 'Compliance - a Short Book' at www.amazon.co.uk/Compliance-Short-Book-Adam-Samuel-ebook/dp/B0CTRYBN1J/. For links to where you can buy the second edition of 'Consumer Financial Services Complaints and Compensation', seewww.adamsamuel.com/writing.

TR24/1 - which reports on the FCA's thematic review into retirement income advice - depressingly but only half confirms the old adage from the Book of Ecclesiastes, "there is nothing new under the sun". Many of the problems discovered by the regulator in 2022 could have been found 20 or even 40 years ago. The FCA is reaping the rewards here of its and its predecessors' strategy of focusing less on compliance and more on the acquisition by advisers and their firms of technical knowledge.