The FCA is to hold round tables with smaller advice firms in the first half of 2025 over its plans to open the door to cheaper, simplified advice services to enable more consumers to access support at an affordable price.

In the first half of next year, the FCA plans to run a series of engagements with firms, including round tables with smaller advice firms; those which typically employ one to five advisers.

The FCA says it wants smaller advice firms to consider how they can better support their customers and it wants to collaborate with them to “test options.”

The regulator says it will be asking smaller advice firms how "willing" they are to launch simplified advice services. These services would likely offer consumers a cut down advice process for a lower fee.

The FCA says that 85% of investment adviser firms are relatively small and employ between one and five advisers.

The regulator will also engage with other regulated firms and statutory panels, industry working group and trade bodies.  

In an update to the continuing Advice-Guidance Boundary review, the FCA said: “We will engage directly with small advice firms in 2025, through a series of roundtables around the country. We will use this and other engagement to gauge the willingness and capacity of these firms to offer a simplified advice service.  

“We will use the feedback to these consultations to finalise our proposals. There are different possible routes to delivering a targeted support regime, including through legislative change. The Government and the FCA will keep these options under review as the proposals for this regime develop.”

Interested firms can contact us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and test propositions in the FCA’s digital sandboxes.

The FCA will also engage with the pension sector on potential changes to the pension support regime. The first round of engagement with the pension sector will be in December.

The FCA said it will consult on high-level proposals for targeted support in pensions. 

The FCA is reviewing whether the strict advice-guidance boundary should be diluted to allow firms to offer new services such as simplified advice and allowing simple investment products to be sold without full and comprehensive advice.

The plans follow feedback to the FCA on its Discussion Paper (DP23/5). 

The Advice-Guidance Boundary proposals were put forward in December 2023 as a way to give more people access to at least some guidance or advice before buying financial products due to the unaffordability of full holistic financial advice. 

The FCA said the aim was to, ”better ensure there was affordable support for people to navigate difficult financial and investment decisions, to meet a variety of needs, in easy-to-access ways.”

The FCA has been consulting on three main proposals:  

• Targeted support – a new form of support allowing authorised firms to provide suggestions that are appropriate to consumers with the same high-level characteristics.
• Simplified advice – a new form of advice that makes it easier for firms to provide affordable personal recommendations to consumers with more straightforward needs and smaller sums to invest.
• Further clarifying the boundary – providing greater certainty for authorised firms on scenarios where they can provide support that does not constitute regulated advice.

The FCA said it had received 106 written responses to DP23/5 from regulated firms, industry representatives, consumer bodies and our statutory panels.