FCA has pub­lished its fi­nal rules and guid­ance for a new Con­sumer Duty that will set high­er and clear­er stand­ards of con­sumer pro­tec­tion across fin­an­cial ser­vices and re­quire firms to put their cus­tom­ers’ needs first.Act­ing to de­liv­er good out­comes should be at the centre of firms’ strategies and busi­ness ob­ject­ives.FCA wants to see in­creased con­fid­ence from con­sumers, en­sur­ing they are equipped with the right in­form­a­tion and the right sup­port to make ef­fect­ive, timely and prop­erly in­formed de­cisions.  The Duty in­cludes re­quire­ments for firms to: give fair value;en­sure cus­tom­ers don’t face un­reas­on­able bar­ri­ers when they want to switch or can­cel products or com­plain;provide help­ful and ac­cess­ible cus­tom­er sup­port;take ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion to mit­ig­ate the risk of ac­tu­al or fore­see­able harm;provide timely and clear in­form­a­tion about products and ser­vices that cus­tom­ers can un­der­stand so they can make good fin­an­cial de­cisions;provide products and ser­vices that are right for their cus­tom­ers; and­fo­cus on the real and di­verse needs of their cus­tom­ers, in­clud­ing those in vul­ner­able cir­cum­stances, at every stage and in each in­ter­ac­tion.Throughout, the FCA ref­er­ences a re­newed fo­cus on the need for firms to un­der­stand how their cus­tom­ers be­have in prac­tice and how they make de­cisions. Firms will need to be able to demon­strate that they have con­sidered con­sumer be­ha­vi­our­al bi­ases at all stages of the product li­fe­cycle.The rules re­quire firms to mon­it­or and reg­u­larly re­view the out­comes their cus­tom­ers are ex­per­i­en­cing to en­sure that their products and ser­vices de­liv­er good out­comes and to take ac­tion where this is not the case. The con­sumer duty is also re­flec­ted in the SM&CR, with re­spons­ib­il­it­ies on seni­or man­agers and all con­duct rules staff to act to de­liv­er good cus­tom­er out­comes. The FCA is giv­ing firms 12 months to im­ple­ment the new rules for all new and ex­ist­ing products and ser­vices. The rules will be ex­ten­ded to closed book products 12 months later, to give firms more time to re­view what may be a large num­ber of closed products. Firms are ex­pec­ted to make full use of the im­ple­ment­a­tion peri­ods – FCA has set down a timetable of key mile­stones, the first of which is the end of Oc­to­ber 2022 when boards (or equi­val­ent bod­ies) are ex­pec­ted to have scru­tin­ised and agreed their firms’ im­ple­ment­a­tion plans.How the duty ap­plies and what it means in prac­tice will vary by sec­tor and by firm. Some firms will already be meet­ing parts of the new stand­ards through their com­pli­ance with ex­ist­ing hand­book pro­vi­sions, and the Duty will ap­ply pro­por­tion­ately de­pend­ing on the nature of firms’ of­fer­ings and their cus­tom­er base. But all firms will need to map their busi­ness to the new Duty and be able to evid­ence how they are mon­it­or­ing and act­ing to de­liv­er good out­comes.  The im­ple­ment­a­tion timetable is likely to prove chal­len­ging and firms will need to be­gin as­sess­ing their busi­ness and what the Duty means for them without delay. To help you nav­ig­ate this pro­cess, we have cre­ated our Con­sumer Duty Toolkit set­ting out the steps for firms to con­sider and how we can sup­port you through your im­ple­ment­a­tion pro­grammes.