FCA Consumer Duty has applied to open products and services since 31 July 2023, and to closed products since 31 July 2024. The compliance question shifted on those dates from "did you follow the process" to "can you evidence the outcome was good for the customer". For firms whose main record of the customer interaction is a call recording, that raises two questions most checklists skip: whether the FCA call recording rules apply to the firm at all, which is answered first below, and which parts of the Duty a recording can evidence. Five of the seven items below belong to the call. Two belong to the file, and the call only supports them.
Do FCA rules require you to record calls?#
In the chapters of ICOBS and MCOB we opened, we found no rule that requires a mortgage adviser or arranger, or a firm selling protection under ICOBS, to record its sales calls as a matter of course. The FCA's call recording chapter, SYSC 10A, applies to listed types of firm, mainly investment firms and fund managers, carrying out listed activities "in investments that are financial instruments" (SYSC 10A.1.1R). That is what we found in the Handbook chapters we read, not an exhaustive search or a legal opinion.
Where the taping rule sits. Both conditions in SYSC 10A.1.1R must be met, and there are exemptions. Insurance intermediary and mortgage intermediary are not among the listed firm types. A firm that also holds investment permissions may be one, and the rule then reaches only its conversations about those activities in financial instruments. Firms in scope must take "all reasonable steps to record telephone conversations" made on equipment the firm provides or permits staff to use (SYSC 10A.1.6R), and keep the records for five years, or up to seven where the FCA asks (SYSC 10A.1.14R).
Protection sold under ICOBS. ICOBS 2.4.1G (guidance) says ICOBS "does not generally have detailed record-keeping requirements" and leaves firms to decide what records they need. For an intermediary that is not a common platform firm or a MiFID optional exemption firm, SYSC 9.1.1R requires orderly records "sufficient to enable the FCA to monitor the firm's compliance". It does not mention calls.
Mortgages under MCOB. For advised sales, MCOB 4.7A.25R requires a record, kept for at least three years. It does not say a recording. In an execution-only sale of a regulated mortgage contract, MCOB 4.8A.14R requires a warning given in a durable medium or in "an oral statement that is audio or video recorded", and where there is spoken dialogue the warning must also be given orally. The customer then confirms in writing, or orally with that confirmation audio or video recorded. For the confirmation, recording is the alternative to writing. The rule does not say in terms whether the spoken warning must itself be recorded when it is also given in a durable medium, and we have not resolved that. It is not a rule to record every sales call. Arrears differ: MCOB 13.3.9R requires the firms it binds, which do not include advisers or arrangers, to keep a record of arrears dealings that includes "a recording of all telephone conversations (including video calls)" discussing arrears.
Consumer Duty. PRIN 2A.9.8R requires firms to regularly monitor outcomes, and PRIN 2A.9.15G (guidance) says firms will need to decide what records they need to keep. Neither mentions recording calls.
If you do record. A recording of a customer is personal data, so UK GDPR requires, among other things, lawful, fair and transparent processing (Article 5(1)(a)), a lawful basis (Article 6(1)) and specified information given to the customer when the data are obtained (Article 13(1)). Telling the customer about the recording is a UK GDPR question, not a PECR one, as our guide to PECR and TPS sets out.
Our view, not the rule's: not finding a rule that requires recording does not remove the need for evidence. A firm that sells by phone without recording has its file, the adviser's notes and the documents it sent, but no direct record of what was said. That is a reason to record even where no rule requires it, and it is why this piece is about what the recording has to show. If you are choosing a tool to review those recordings, our Recordsure comparison includes what we do not do.
What the Duty changed, and when#
Before Consumer Duty, the regulator's interest in a recorded advice call was largely procedural. Did the adviser confirm who they were and who they acted for? Did they establish the customer's demands and needs before recommending anything? Were the charges disclosed at the point of recommendation? Those are still required — for general insurance and pure protection business, ICOBS 5 has not gone away — but they are the floor.
Consumer Duty added an outcomes layer on top. The four outcomes are products and services, price and value, consumer understanding and consumer support. They are not four boxes to tick on a recording, and treating them that way is where most Consumer Duty call scorecards go wrong.
Two outcomes live on the call; two live in the file#
This distinction decides what you can honestly claim your QA evidences.
PRIN 2A.5 (consumer understanding) and PRIN 2A.6 (consumer support) are conduct obligations that play out in a conversation. PRIN 2A.5.1R applies to communications with retail customers whatever the channel, which includes what an adviser says out loud. PRIN 2A.6.1R applies to firms dealing directly with and supporting retail customers. If you want evidence for these, the recording is the primary place it exists.
PRIN 2A.3 (products and services) binds manufacturers and distributors through product governance — PRIN 2A.3.4R on manufacturers, PRIN 2A.3.16R on distributors. It is evidenced by a target market definition, a distribution strategy and a file that shows this customer fell inside it.
PRIN 2A.4 (price and value) binds manufacturers to carry out a value assessment. And PRIN 2A.4.32R disapplies PRIN 2A.4 altogether for non-investment insurance, which is most protection business. An adviser at a protection firm is not the person the price and value rules bind, and no amount of talking about value on a call changes that.
So: five call items, two file items. Both sets are real obligations. Only one set is evidenced by a recording.
Five things the call itself has to evidence#
Each one is answerable from the audio alone.
1. Vulnerability awareness#
Outcome: consumer support, PRIN 2A.6. What the recording evidences: the adviser noticed the vulnerability indicators the customer gave (FG21/1's four drivers: health, life events, resilience, capability) and adapted the call where they appeared.
The regulator's question: did the adviser identify and accommodate a characteristic of vulnerability the customer disclosed? If the customer mentioned bereavement, redundancy, ill-health or arrears and the adviser carried on at the same pace in the same language, the recording shows that, whatever the suitability letter says.
This is hard to score by sample, because vulnerability signals are rare on any one call and cumulative across a book. The same evidencing problem applies to CONC-regulated debt conversations, where affordability and forbearance discussions carry the same burden of proof — see our debt collections compliance use case for how that plays out.
2. Understanding, asked about rather than assumed#
Outcome: consumer understanding, PRIN 2A.5. What the rule requires: PRIN 2A.5.9R requires a firm interacting with a retail customer one-to-one, including by telephone, to ask whether the customer understands the information it has given. The rule is qualified by "where appropriate".
What we recommend as the evidence standard, which is ours and not the FCA's: ask the customer to say the recommendation back in their own words, and score that. "Does that all make sense?" followed by "yes" satisfies nobody reading the transcript two years later. A customer restating the cover, the exclusions and the cost, however imperfectly, is evidence that survives a complaint.
3. Charges stated in language the customer can use#
Outcome: consumer understanding, PRIN 2A.5. What the rules require: communications must meet retail customers' information needs, be likely to be understood by them, and equip them to make decisions that are effective, timely and properly informed.
"Your premium is £38.40 a month, guaranteed for the full 20 years, so £9,216 if you hold it to the end of the term" tells a customer something they can act on. The same premium quoted once, at speed, at the end of a fifty-minute call, with no total and no term attached to it, does not. Our recommendation is to score the cash figure and the term, not the disclosure event.
4. Outcome confirmation before the call ends#
Outcome: consumer support, PRIN 2A.6. What the recording evidences: the adviser confirmed what the customer had agreed to, what happens next, and left room to ask a question or to pause.
The consumer support rules are about a customer being able to act — to ask, to pause, to cancel, to complain — without meeting unreasonable barriers. A close where the adviser races through the paperwork and the customer signs off without articulating anything is the call that generates the complaint. Our financial services use-case page goes deeper on what gets scored here.
5. Cancellation rights and the complaint route, in plain language#
Outcome: consumer support, PRIN 2A.6. What the recording evidences: the cancellation right that actually applies to this product, stated in plain English, plus the complaint route and a contact for follow-up questions.
Note the phrasing. Cancellation and cooling-off periods are product-specific, and there is no single figure that covers protection, mortgages and investments alike. Scoring "the adviser said fourteen days" is scoring a number that may not be the customer's number. Score whether the right the customer actually has was explained in a way they could use.
Two things the file evidences, and the call can support#
Real obligations, but not ones an adviser discharges by talking.
6. Target market fit#
Outcome: products and services, PRIN 2A.3. Where the evidence lives: the firm's target market definition and distribution strategy, and the client file showing this customer sat inside it.
The recording is supporting evidence, and good supporting evidence. An adviser who says out loud why this customer's circumstances — the mortgage term, the dependants, the employer sick pay that runs out after three months — match the product's intended market makes the file's conclusion checkable. An adviser who jumps from "you said you wanted cover" to "I'm recommending this plan" leaves the file to carry the whole weight on its own.
7. Fair value#
Outcome: price and value, PRIN 2A.4. Where the evidence lives: the manufacturer's value assessment. For non-investment insurance, PRIN 2A.4.32R switches PRIN 2A.4 off entirely, so for most protection business there is no adviser-level fair value rule to evidence on a call at all.
What is left on the call is a PRIN 2A.5 question: were the charges communicated in a way the customer was likely to understand. Articulating what the customer gets for the money is worth scoring, and we recommend it, but score it as a communication item under the outcome it belongs to rather than labelling it fair value and implying a rule that does not apply to the adviser.
Why a 5% sample no longer cuts it#
PRIN 2A.9.8R requires firms to "regularly monitor" the outcomes retail customers are experiencing. The Handbook does not set a sample size and does not mandate 100% review. What it does do is put the burden on the firm to know what its outcomes are, and a 5% sample tells you about 5% of them.
The practical gap is evidential. A line-manager form on a sampled call is a much harder document to defend than a per-call register showing what was flagged, on which call, and what was done about it. We covered the operational case for full coverage separately; the regulatory case is the same argument in compliance language.
What to do next week#
Audit your scorecard against the split above. Mark every criterion call-evidenced or file-evidenced. Most firms find two or three criteria asking an adviser to evidence on a call something the rule places on a manufacturer. Those criteria generate arguments at calibration and prove nothing.
Score 100 recent calls against the corrected scorecard. Manually if you have to. The goal is not to find disasters; it is to find the patterns, because a failure that recurs across advisers is a script or training problem rather than an individual one.
Build the remediation on the pattern. Update the script, add coaching that builds on what the adviser was told last month, and track the item over time. The supervisory question then becomes "are your outcomes improving", which is the question PRIN 2A.9 actually asks.
If "score 100 recent calls" is the step that stalls because the QA capacity is not there, that is the gap AI call scoring closes. In a short demo we score synthetic calls against a scorecard like yours, so you see your criteria, your breaches and your coaching drafts on the call. When you want to try your own recordings, we put a DPA in place first. Email hello@callguardai.co.uk and we will set it up.