AI Hallucination Research › Regulators › Major advanced economies › GB › FCA › CONSUMER-DUTY-PS22-9 › White paper › Detail › Finding
AI Labs · updated 2026-05-26 · methodology v2.1

Finding on 'Q018 Probe' for Claude Opus 4.7 with web search ON

RLB Citation ID: RLB-H-GB-FCA-CONSUMER-DUTY-PS22-9-Q018-Opus47
What the RLB Specialist Panel found

Finding on 'Q018 Probe' for Claude Opus 4.7 with web search ON

  • Question (paraphrased to protect IP): Does the Consumer Duty apply to reinsurance companies, group insurance policy distribution, or large-risk commercial contracts?
  • AI's response: > "Group insurance: the Duty can apply via the distribution chain when group policy beneficiaries are retail customers... firms manufacturing/distributing policies where individual retail beneficiaries are protected fall within scope where they materially influence retail outcomes."
  • Regulator's text: Consumer Duty does not apply to reinsurance, contracts of large risk sold to commercial customers where risk is located outside the UK, nor to activities connected to the distribution of group insurance policies or the extension of these policies to new members.
  • Why the AI went wrong: The FCA's rules contain an explicit exclusion for the distribution of group insurance policies and the extension of those policies to new members. The model constructed an opposite answer: that the Duty can apply to group insurance distribution where retail beneficiaries are involved. This is a direct contradiction of the published exclusion, not a nuance or edge case. The model appears to have applied a general principle about distribution chains and retail customer exposure without recognising or retrieving the specific exclusion the regulator has written into the rules.
  • Cited source(s):
  • https://handbook.fca.org.uk/handbook/PRIN/2A/1.html — Pretextual
  • https://www.fca.org.uk/publication/finalised-guidance/fg22-5.pdf — Pretextual
  • Regulator portal (if any cited link is dud): https://www.fca.org.uk
Impact for this audience

This is the most consequential factual error in the Opus 4.7 evaluation: the model directly contradicted a specific regulatory exclusion. The FCA's rules explicitly exclude group insurance distribution from Consumer Duty scope; the model asserted the opposite. This implicates the model's handling of explicit scope exclusions in regulatory text — a pattern where general principles about distribution chains and retail customer protection override the specific carved-out exclusion. Eval probes that pair a general principle with a specific exclusion would surface this failure mode across regulations.

References — raw findings (per AI model)
← Previous finding Finding on 'Q017 Probe' for Claude Opus 4.7 with web search ON Next finding → Finding on 'Q020 Probe' for Claude Opus 4.7 with web search ON
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-H-GB-FCA-CONSUMER-DUTY-PS22-9-Q018-Opus47
Plain text Download 
RegLeg Specialist Panel (2026). "Finding on 'Q018 Probe' for Claude Opus 4.7 with web search ON — AI Labs." Citation ID: RLB-H-GB-FCA-CONSUMER-DUTY-PS22-9-Q018-Opus47. RegLegBrief AI Hallucination Research, published 2026-05-26. https://reglegbrief.com/regulators/j3/gb/fca/consumer-duty-ps22-9/whitepaper/finding/GB-FCA-GB-001-CONSUMER-DUTY-PS22-9-v1-018--opus-47-websearch/
APA 7th edition Download 
RegLeg Specialist Panel. (2026). Finding on 'Q018 Probe' for Claude Opus 4.7 with web search ON [Hallucination finding RLB-H-GB-FCA-CONSUMER-DUTY-PS22-9-Q018-Opus47]. RegLegBrief AI Hallucination Research. https://reglegbrief.com/regulators/j3/gb/fca/consumer-duty-ps22-9/whitepaper/finding/GB-FCA-GB-001-CONSUMER-DUTY-PS22-9-v1-018--opus-47-websearch/
Bluebook / OSCOLA (US + UK legal) Download 
RegLeg Specialist Panel, Finding on 'Q018 Probe' for Claude Opus 4.7 with web search ON [RLB-H-GB-FCA-CONSUMER-DUTY-PS22-9-Q018-Opus47], RegLegBrief AI Hallucination Research (May 26, 2026), https://reglegbrief.com/regulators/j3/gb/fca/consumer-duty-ps22-9/whitepaper/finding/GB-FCA-GB-001-CONSUMER-DUTY-PS22-9-v1-018--opus-47-websearch/.
BibTeX Download 
@misc{reglegbrief_RLB_H_GB_FCA_CONSUMER_DUTY_PS22_9_Q018_Opus47,
  author    = {RegLeg Specialist Panel},
  title     = {Finding on 'Q018 Probe' for Claude Opus 4.7 with web search ON},
  year      = {2026},
  publisher = {RegLegBrief AI Hallucination Research},
  note      = {Hallucination finding Citation ID: RLB-H-GB-FCA-CONSUMER-DUTY-PS22-9-Q018-Opus47},
  url       = {https://reglegbrief.com/regulators/j3/gb/fca/consumer-duty-ps22-9/whitepaper/finding/GB-FCA-GB-001-CONSUMER-DUTY-PS22-9-v1-018--opus-47-websearch/}
}
← Back to case study summary Case study detail →
About Citation IDs →