Primary source(s): FCA, “The not-so-fine print: making consumer contracts fair”, Sarah Montgomery, 6 November 2026.
Background: The FCA has described interventions against unfair or unclear consumer contract terms. They include a crypto firm’s disproportionate storage fees, sometimes exceeding £40,000 a year; an adviser’s attempt to charge £800 for handling a complaint; and an insurer’s ambiguous delay wording, which resulted in £18,000 of redress. The regulator relies on Consumer Rights Act powers alongside its financial-services rules and Consumer Duty.
A customer complained to a financial adviser. The adviser tried to charge £800 for the time spent dealing with it. Customer service, apparently, had acquired a cover charge.
The fee was in the contract. That did not settle the matter. The FCA considered the term unfair because it could discourage legitimate complaints, and inconsistent with both its rules and the Consumer Duty. The adviser changed its contracts.
The example appears in a blog by Sarah Montgomery, the regulator’s head of cross-cutting policy and strategy. Its subject is consumer contracts, a part of financial life usually encountered while trying to find the button that lets you continue.
Another case concerned a crypto firm charging inactive customers disproportionate storage fees. In some cases the annual amount could exceed £40,000. The firm removed the term and paid redress. The FCA has not identified the businesses in these examples, so there is no basis for attaching a recognisable company’s name to them.
The third problem was less conspicuous than a remarkable fee. A travel insurer had unclear wording about what counted as a 12-hour delay. Customers’ claims had been wrongly rejected. The insurer clarified the term and paid £18,000 in redress.
That example is worth keeping beside the more startling ones. An unclear entitlement can cost a customer money without any extravagant charge appearing in the policy. If the wording makes a legitimate claim look ineligible, the practical effect is still a refusal to pay.
The Consumer Rights Act requires fairness and transparency. The FCA explains that an unfair term is unenforceable and may also give rise to redress. Being included in signed terms is therefore not the end of the legal inquiry.
The regulator can seek changes to contracts, an end to reliance on the offending terms and repayment where customers have suffered harm. It can accept undertakings and, where necessary, ask a court for an injunction or a redress order. This is not merely an invitation to improve the prose.
There is also a preventive example: a lender changed the terms of a new credit product before launch, following concerns about information on costs and cancellation rights. Avoiding a problem before customers encounter it is less newsworthy than refunding an appalling fee, but rather more satisfactory.
Norton Rose Fulbright’s analysis of the blog highlights the FCA’s expectation of regular review and testing of customers’ understanding. That shifts attention from whether lawyers can decipher a clause to whether the people paying under it can.
Important fees, exclusions and cancellation rights should not require an expedition. Complaints should help a firm discover what is wrong with its service, not create a fresh bill for the complainant.
The adviser’s £800 clause has gone. One hopes the firm did not charge for removing it.
Author: Marcelo Williams
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