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Practitioners — Lawyers · Last updated 26 May 2026 · methodology v2.1 · Hallucination Register
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FCA withdrawal of pre-Consumer Duty Dear CEO letters — scale and timing

RLB Citation ID: RLB-F-GB-FCA-CONSUMER-DUTY-PS22-9-Q013
AI's failure:Inference Drift Risk for Lawyers:Operational decisions based on a fabricated regulator record
What the RLB Specialist Panel found
For Claude Opus 4.7 (web search on)
Question (paraphrased to protect IP)

Has the FCA withdrawn any pre-Consumer Duty Dear CEO letters following implementation, and if so how many?

RLB's analysis

The FCA's feedback statement FS25/2 was published in March 2025 and announced the withdrawal of both categories simultaneously. The model re-dated the Dear CEO letter withdrawal to April 2025 and fabricated a separate August 2025 tranche for multi-firm reports that does not exist in the regulator's record. The model appears to have split a single announced action into two sequential events, adding invented dates for each.

AI Head's analysis — what weakness in the AI model caused this

This finding implicates the model's temporal reasoning on regulatory events: it split a single March 2025 announcement (FS25/2) into two events across April and August 2025. This suggests the model had partial training coverage of the FS25/2 publication and filled the gaps with invented dates. The fabricated August 2025 tranche is particularly notable because it post-dates the model's likely training window: this may be the model generating a plausible continuation of a partial knowledge record rather than retrieving a real event.

The same fabricated timeline appears under a differently framed question (Finding#9), confirming this is a persistent internal model representation rather than a random generation error. Correction pairs targeting FS25/2 directly would be the most efficient remediation.

Cited source(s)
  • https://www.fca.org.uk/news/news-stories/fca-simplifies-supervisory-letters, Pretextual
  • Regulator portal (if any cited link is dud): https://www.fca.org.uk
For Claude Sonnet 4.6 (web search on)
Question (paraphrased to protect IP)

Has the FCA withdrawn any pre-Consumer Duty Dear CEO letters following implementation, and if so how many?

RLB's analysis

The FCA's feedback statement FS25/2 was published in March 2025 and announced the withdrawal of both categories simultaneously. The model re-dated the Dear CEO letter withdrawal to April 2025 and fabricated a separate August 2025 tranche for multi-firm reports that does not exist in the regulator's record. The model appears to have split a single announced action into two sequential events, adding invented dates for each.

AI Head's analysis — what weakness in the AI model caused this

This finding implicates the model's temporal reasoning on regulatory events: it split a single March 2025 announcement (FS25/2) into two events across April and August 2025. This suggests the model had partial training coverage of the FS25/2 publication and filled the gaps with invented dates. The fabricated August 2025 tranche is particularly notable because it post-dates the model's likely training window: this may be the model generating a plausible continuation of a partial knowledge record rather than retrieving a real event.

The same fabricated timeline appears under a differently framed question (Finding#9), confirming this is a persistent internal model representation rather than a random generation error. Correction pairs targeting FS25/2 directly would be the most efficient remediation.

Cited source(s)
  • https://www.fca.org.uk/news/news-stories/fca-simplifies-supervisory-letters, Pretextual
  • Regulator portal (if any cited link is dud): https://www.fca.org.uk
Impact for Lawyers in the United Kingdom advising on the Consumer Duty (PS22/9 + PRIN 2A)

Lawyers handling FCA supervisory or enforcement-defence work need accurate accounts of recent Dear CEO letter retirements; FS25/2 is the operative March 2025 publication. The model's fabricated April and August 2025 timeline is the kind of detail a supervisor's staff member will spot in three seconds, and a brief that recites the AI's account loses credibility immediately. The risk is not just being wrong; it is being demonstrably out of touch with the regulator's actual publication record.

References — raw findings (per AI model)
This finding also affects
← Previous finding Quantifying non-monetary benefits in Consumer Duty fair value assessments Next finding → FCA public commentary 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.

RLB Citation ID: RLB-F-GB-FCA-CONSUMER-DUTY-PS22-9-Q013
Bluebook / OSCOLA (US + UK legal) Download
RegLeg Specialist Panel, FCA withdrawal of pre-Consumer Duty Dear CEO letters — scale and timing [RLB-F-GB-FCA-CONSUMER-DUTY-PS22-9-Q013], RegLegBrief AI Hallucination Research (May 26, 2026), https://reglegbrief.com/regulators/j3/gb/FCA/CONSUMER-DUTY-PS22-9/practitioners/lawyers/finding/GB-FCA-GB-001-CONSUMER-DUTY-PS22-9-v1-013/.
Plain text Download
RegLeg Specialist Panel (2026). "FCA withdrawal of pre-Consumer Duty Dear CEO letters — scale and timing — Practitioners — Lawyers." Citation ID: RLB-F-GB-FCA-CONSUMER-DUTY-PS22-9-Q013. RegLegBrief AI Hallucination Research, published 2026-05-26. https://reglegbrief.com/regulators/j3/gb/FCA/CONSUMER-DUTY-PS22-9/practitioners/lawyers/finding/GB-FCA-GB-001-CONSUMER-DUTY-PS22-9-v1-013/
APA 7th edition Download
RegLeg Specialist Panel. (2026). FCA withdrawal of pre-Consumer Duty Dear CEO letters — scale and timing [Hallucination finding RLB-F-GB-FCA-CONSUMER-DUTY-PS22-9-Q013]. RegLegBrief AI Hallucination Research. https://reglegbrief.com/regulators/j3/gb/FCA/CONSUMER-DUTY-PS22-9/practitioners/lawyers/finding/GB-FCA-GB-001-CONSUMER-DUTY-PS22-9-v1-013/
BibTeX Download
@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 — scale 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/regulators/j3/gb/FCA/CONSUMER-DUTY-PS22-9/practitioners/lawyers/finding/GB-FCA-GB-001-CONSUMER-DUTY-PS22-9-v1-013/}
}
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