The FCA’s consumer investments priorities: A shift toward growing the investor base

The FCA’s new Consumer Investments Regulatory Priorities Report signals a meaningful shift in regulatory focus. While frameworks like the Consumer Duty have raised standards around clarity, fairness, and consumer outcomes, the new priorities go further and aim to increase participation in investing itself.

This is a move designed to reshape the UK’s investment culture and influence how firms help non‑investors take their first step. The FCA highlights new initiatives all aimed at helping more consumers feel confident enough to invest, including; targeted support, refining the advice–guidance boundary, improving risk warnings, and updating disclosure rules.

For firms, this means that regulatory expectations now extend earlier in the consumer journey, with greater emphasis on how products, communications, and support structures help broaden access to investing.

1.       Building a stronger investment culture

The FCA wants a market where consumers understand products, receive fair value, and feel ready to make informed investment decisions but with a stronger emphasis on encouraging new investors into the market. They highlight reforms such as targeted support and the Consumer Composite Investments (CCI) framework to achieve this.

What firms should do

• Review and in some cases redesign communications to encourage participation, not just understanding, as well as test whether messaging increases consumer willingness to invest.

• Re-evaluate your product suite through a first-time investor lens.

• Strengthen your support model for non‑investors, preparing for targeted support and guidance reforms.

• Broaden product governance assessments to include how products help new investors start their journey.

• Enhance consumer testing to cover first‑time investor experiences and barriers.

2.      Strengthening trust

Trust remains a major barrier to investing, and the FCA emphasises the need to build greater market confidence, particularly for those who have never invested. This includes ensuring responsible online content, mitigating risks around new technologies, and strengthening governance as parts of the market consolidate.

What firms should do

• Conduct trust-focused research among prospective investors as well as existing clients.

• Strengthen or implement oversight of promotional activity, influencer partnerships, and online content.

• Review how risk information is framed to ensure it builds understanding and confidence.

3.      Securing good consumer outcomes

The FCA’s priorities continue to emphasise reliable service, fair value, and strong support for vulnerable consumers. But there is a wider expectation now for firms to also consider how service quality and operational processes influence whether new consumers feel able to invest. Slow transfers, complex journeys, and poor customer service create friction that deters participation.

What firms should do

• Undertake work to identify consumer insights specifically around non‑investors, understanding their fears, misconceptions, and trust barriers so firms can design interventions that draw new participants into the market.

• Build a structured, proactive oversight model for their online influence, ensuring that digital voices shaping investor behaviour reflect accurate, responsible, and confidence‑building messages aligned with FCA expectations.

• Recraft risk‑related communications using behavioural insight, testing how different framings affect consumer confidence so that risk information supports “informed willingness” to invest rather than avoidance.

4.      Strengthening financial crime controls

Within the report, the FCA is also reinforcing its expectation that firms across the investment distribution chain, including advisers, wealth managers, SIPP operators, platforms, and crowdfunding providers, maintain robust and proactive financial crime controls. It emphasises that financial crime risks are evolving rapidly, driven by technology (including AI and deepfakes), increasingly complex client structures, and the use of digital channels by fraudsters.

What firms should do

• Reassess financial crime risk assessments, ensuring they capture emerging typologies such as AI-enabled fraud, copy trading schemes, and social-media driven scams.

• Strengthen monitoring and surveillance capabilities, particularly where investment products or services are distributed through digital channels.

• Ensure effective oversight of appointed representatives, including documented risk assessments, ongoing monitoring, and clear accountability.

• Enhance customer and transaction due diligence, especially where there are cross-border elements, complex structures, or pooled accounts.

• Review how their brand, permissions, or platform could be exploited by fraudsters seeking legitimacy.

Ultimately, the FCA is signalling that weak controls around distribution networks, digital channels, or AR oversight will attract regulatory scrutiny. Firms that fail to adapt their financial crime frameworks to the evolving threat landscape risk enforcement action, reputational damage, and potential consumer harm.

Final thoughts

The FCA’s Consumer Investments priorities represent a shift from regulating behaviour within the investment market to expanding participation in the market itself.

These changes intend to encourage firms to play an active role in helping more people invest confidently, safely, and appropriately. Firms that embrace this shift early will be best placed to align with regulatory expectations and capture new opportunities from a more inclusive investment landscape.