A 45-minute, CPD-assessed course for the people the suitability rules actually bind: advisers making personal recommendations and discretionary managers deciding for individual clients. Know your client, capacity for loss, the report, periodic reviews, vulnerability and the file that has to defend the advice years later.
CPD assessed. Every pass issues a certificate carrying the CPD mark.When a single questionnaire is asked to measure both, it measures the first and the file assumes the second.
How much uncertainty the client is comfortable with. What a questionnaire mostly measures.
How much the client could lose without it changing their life. The constraint, whatever the questionnaire score says, and different once they start drawing an income.
Written for advisory firms and discretionary managers. A fund manager managing a fund is told on page one why the duty does not reach it.
The two things that switch the duty on, personal recommendations and portfolio management. Why a fund manager whose client is a fund has no client-level suitability duty, and where else it does not apply: execution-only, generic guidance and targeted support. One duty, two rulebooks.
Investment objectives, financial situation and knowledge and experience, and the half of the picture firms routinely miss. Objectives are not an adjective, information must be reliable and not merely collected, and what to do when the client will not tell you or the information goes out of date.
Why they are two different things, why capacity is the constraint, what happens when one questionnaire is asked to measure both, how capacity changes once money starts flowing out, and the sense check a risk profiling tool needs. Includes a filmed scenario.
What has to be in it, why the disadvantages section is the one that gets you, why timing is not one rule, and how the Consumer Duty raises the bar on the writing itself. A report should explain the client, not praise the product.
What the client has to be told and what the later report must say, what happens when a review is charged for and not delivered, looking back yourselves, the client who does not respond, and the consumer support outcome. Includes a filmed scenario.
The four drivers, why most vulnerability is temporary or situational, what the firm is expected to do, what it looks like at the desk, and whether a vulnerable client changes what is suitable.
Replacement business, transfers out of safeguarded pension benefits (the comparison, the specialist and the client's understanding), concentration and illiquidity.
What a defensible file actually shows and how long it is kept, targeted support as genuinely new and already live, what has only been proposed, and where the advice boundary now sits.
Suitability is the most heavily litigated obligation in retail financial services, and the evidence is the file. By the end, a learner can:
Two short films, shot for Fundsure with the same cast across the catalogue. In one, a client’s questionnaire score and his own wishes both point to a higher-risk portfolio, though his small cash buffer is already being spent and he expects to start drawing on his pension within the year. In the other, a new colleague is asked to book a client’s review and finds there has not been one for a long time. After each, the learner chooses what to do, and is told why the tempting answers are wrong: recommending it because the score and the client agree, recording that he insisted, or writing up a review note for the missing period from what is on the file.
The test at the end draws 10 questions from a bank of 30, with a pass mark of 80%, and a pass issues a named, CPD-marked certificate that anyone can check online.
The advice landscape moved twice in a year. Checked against the Handbook directly. Last checked Sept 2026.
In force since 06-Apr-26 under its own chapter of the Handbook: a ready-made suggestion for a defined group of consumers, with its own suitability test for the group rather than the individual. Pensions and investments only.
The FCA's review of ongoing advice services, published 24-Feb-25, found most reviews delivered, and a residue where no effort was made that is likely to need redress. It asked firms to look back and decide for themselves.
The FCA's good and poor practice examples of 11-Jun-25 found attitude to risk assessed without capacity for loss, and risk profiles left untouched across major life changes.
Following its review of 07-Mar-25, the FCA kept its vulnerability guidance unchanged and expects firms to work from its good and poor practice examples.
CP26/10, published 25-Mar-26, proposes merging the two suitability regimes and a proportionate “sufficient information” standard. Nothing has changed yet, and the course says so.
Fund managers managing funds are told plainly, on page one, why the duty does not reach them, rather than sitting a course about pension transfers and wondering why.
A complaint about advice is decided on what the file shows: the client’s circumstances, the reasoning, the disadvantages explained and the reviews delivered. Training the people who write those files is cheaper than redress.
In the Fundsure Portal the course is scheduled for advisers and their checkers, chased before the deadline, and every sitting, score and certificate is kept and carried into the compliance officer’s report to the board.
How the portal runs trainingSuitability plus Complaints Handling, Conduct Rules, Financial Promotions and the rest of the catalogue of 20, with no per-course fees.
Rule 6, acting to deliver good outcomes for retail customers.
See the courseRecognising a complaint the moment it is made.
See the courseWhat the client saw before they ever spoke to an adviser.
See the courseHandling the financial and health information a fact-find collects.
See the courseWe will send you a link to take the whole course, filmed scenarios and test included, or walk you through the portal with a demonstration firm.
