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

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

RLB Citation ID: 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Question (paraphrased to protect IP): Has the FCA withdrawn any pre-Consumer Duty Dear CEO letters following implementation, and if so how many?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 The other stated that it could not provide a verified specific number of withdrawn letters, citing a lack of available search results.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 Financial Advisers in United Kingdom advising on the AI Hallucinations Affecting Financial Advisers in the United Kingdom

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 This matters in practice: if a firm continues to treat a withdrawn Dear CEO letter as a live expectation, it may incur unnecessary compliance costs or misalign its processes around a document the FCA no longer endorses.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)

← Previous finding Quantification of non-monetary benefits in fair value assessments Next finding → 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.

RLB Citation ID: RLB-F-GB-FCA-CONSUMER-DUTY-PS22-9-Q013

Plain text Download

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 Download

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) Download

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 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 — 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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