A mid-sized UK financial advisory firm with 25 advisors faced their first FCA Consumer Duty audit. Their manual compliance process — sampling 5% of calls, reviewing them manually, and creating evidence files — was consuming 40 hours of compliance team time per month. And it still only covered 5% of calls.
The Challenge
Consumer Duty requires firms to demonstrate they're acting in clients' best interests. The auditors wanted to see evidence that advice was explained clearly, that client concerns were addressed, and that product recommendations were appropriate. Demonstrating this for 5% of calls was not convincing enough.
The Solution
The firm implemented CallsIQ to analyze 100% of advisory calls. Every call was automatically transcribed, summarized, and scored against a compliance checklist: Was client situation discussed? Was risk explained? Were alternatives presented? Were client questions answered?
The Audit
When auditors arrived, the compliance team provided a dashboard showing aggregate compliance scores across all advisors, trend data over 6 months, and the ability to drill down to any specific call with its transcript, summary, and compliance flags.
The outcome: zero findings. The auditors noted it was one of the most comprehensive Consumer Duty evidence frameworks they had reviewed.
Ongoing Benefits
Post-audit, the firm uses the same system for continuous advisor coaching, identifying the top 10% performers' communication patterns and replicating them across the team.