Sumer is icumen in - and so is a new focus on treating customers fairly

When you have been around as long as I have, you get used to the fact that today's news is often nothing more than history repeating itself. It is, however, somewhat depressing that there is still some way to go to ensure consumers get the best outcome when choosing financial services products and services, whether that be  insurance, credit or investments.

Principle 6 - Customers' Interests: A firm must pay due regard to the interests of its customer and treat them fairly, is nearly 20 years old so you would have thought that firms would have really got to grips with it by now. Unfortunately, that principle alone didn't do the trick so we then got the six consumer outcomes in 2001; we then moved to principles-based regulation in 2007 but as Charles Randell acknowledged in his recent speech to the Building Societies Association, we still aren't there. Things are certainly better but the fact that the FCA continues to need to intervene - for example, its recent work to stop motor and home insurers from penalising loyal customers - tells its own story.

The FCA has said that it intends to "reset" its expectations of how firms define their customer outcomes and, in particular, how they measure and evidence that they deliver on them. The current consultation on the New Consumer Duty looks like just the start of the next leg of the TCF journey. Let's hope that it isn't another couple of decades before things really improve for consumers!