Practitioners — Financial Advisers · published 2026-05-26 · methodology v2.1

FCA withdrawal of pre-Consumer Duty Dear CEO letters — volume and timing

RLB-F-GB-FCA-CONSUMER-DUTY-PS22-9-Q013

What the RLB Specialist Panel found

6. FCA withdrawal of pre-Consumer Duty Dear CEO letters — volume and timing

Question (paraphrased to protect IP): Has the FCA withdrawn any pre-Consumer Duty Dear CEO letters following implementation, and if so how many?
Source regulation: Consumer Duty (PS22/9 + PRIN 2A), Financial Conduct Authority (Regulator portal: https://www.fca.org.uk)
What AI assistants typically say: Multiple AI tools gave divergent incorrect responses. One stated that around 90+ Dear CEO and portfolio letters were retired in April 2025, with a further tranche of multi-firm and thematic reports retired in August 2025 — presenting two separate events. The other stated that it could not provide a verified specific number of withdrawn letters, citing a lack of available search results.
What the regulator actually says: FS25/2 (March 2025): the FCA removed more than 90 pre-Consumer Duty Dear CEO letters and cleared over 100 old multi-firm reports. These actions were reported together under a single published document in March 2025.
Why the AI went wrong: One AI tool fabricated two separate retirement dates — April 2025 and August 2025 — neither of which corresponds to the actual FS25/2 event, and omitted the FS25/2 reference entirely. The other AI simply claimed the information was unavailable, despite the FCA having published precise figures in a named document. Both responses leave a Financial Adviser unable to determine which historic supervisory expectations remain live.
Cited source(s):
https://www.fca.org.uk/news/news-stories/fca-simplifies-supervisory-letters — Pretextual
https://www.fca.org.uk/news/news-stories/next-steps-consumer-duty-rule-review — Pretextual

Impact for this audience

Financial Advisers who advise on FCA supervisory expectations need to know which historic Dear CEO letters remain live. A practitioner who relies on an AI tool that either fabricates two separate retirement events or claims the information is unavailable will be unable to tell their client which pre-Duty supervisory expectations continue to apply. This matters in practice: if a firm continues to treat a withdrawn Dear CEO letter as a live expectation, it may incur unnecessary compliance costs or misalign its processes around a document the FCA no longer endorses. The FCA's published FS25/2 is the authoritative reference — and both AI responses failed to identify or accurately represent it.

References — raw findings (per AI model)

RLB-H-GB-FCA-CONSUMER-DUTY-PS22-9-Q013-Opus47 Claude Opus 4.7 (web search on)
RLB-H-GB-FCA-CONSUMER-DUTY-PS22-9-Q013-Sonnet46 Claude Sonnet 4.6 (web search on)

This finding also affects

← Previous finding Finding 5. Quantification of non-monetary benefits in fair value assessments Next finding → Finding 7. FCA senior officials' public statements on first-year Consumer Duty compliance

Cite this finding

Each finding has a stable Citation ID (RLB-F-… for aggregated case-study findings, RLB-H-… for raw per-model hallucinations) — like a DOI, the ID always resolves to the canonical finding even if URLs change.

Plain text

RegLeg Specialist Panel (2026). "FCA withdrawal of pre-Consumer Duty Dear CEO letters — volume and timing — Practitioners — Financial Advisers." Citation ID: RLB-F-GB-FCA-CONSUMER-DUTY-PS22-9-Q013. RegLegBrief AI Hallucination Research, published 2026-05-26. https://reglegbrief.com/audiences/practitioners/gb/financial-advisers/finding/GB-FCA-GB-001-CONSUMER-DUTY-PS22-9-v1-013/

APA 7th edition

RegLeg Specialist Panel. (2026). FCA withdrawal of pre-Consumer Duty Dear CEO letters — volume and timing [Hallucination finding RLB-F-GB-FCA-CONSUMER-DUTY-PS22-9-Q013]. RegLegBrief AI Hallucination Research. https://reglegbrief.com/audiences/practitioners/gb/financial-advisers/finding/GB-FCA-GB-001-CONSUMER-DUTY-PS22-9-v1-013/

Bluebook / OSCOLA (US + UK legal)

RegLeg Specialist Panel, FCA withdrawal of pre-Consumer Duty Dear CEO letters — volume and timing [RLB-F-GB-FCA-CONSUMER-DUTY-PS22-9-Q013], RegLegBrief AI Hallucination Research (May 26, 2026), https://reglegbrief.com/audiences/practitioners/gb/financial-advisers/finding/GB-FCA-GB-001-CONSUMER-DUTY-PS22-9-v1-013/.

BibTeX

@misc{reglegbrief_RLB_F_GB_FCA_CONSUMER_DUTY_PS22_9_Q013,
  author    = {RegLeg Specialist Panel},
  title     = {FCA withdrawal of pre-Consumer Duty Dear CEO letters — volume and timing},
  year      = {2026},
  publisher = {RegLegBrief AI Hallucination Research},
  note      = {Hallucination finding Citation ID: RLB-F-GB-FCA-CONSUMER-DUTY-PS22-9-Q013},
  url       = {https://reglegbrief.com/audiences/practitioners/gb/financial-advisers/finding/GB-FCA-GB-001-CONSUMER-DUTY-PS22-9-v1-013/}
}

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