What a recorded advice call has to prove.
Briefings for compliance leads at FCA protection and mortgage advice firms, on evidencing what actually happened on an advice call — and what changes in a compliance team when every call is scored rather than a sample of them.
9 briefings · last reviewed · RSS
Regulation
What the FCA and the Information Commission expect a recorded advice call to evidence, and how firms show it.
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Execution-only mortgages after the Mortgage Rule Review: what the call has to show
PS25/11 removed the interaction trigger, but a phone execution-only sale still needs the oral warning and the customer's positive election. MCOB 4.8A written as six criteria a call can pass or fail, labelled rule, guidance or evidential provision, and what the rules leave unsettled about recording.
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Demands and needs as a scored criterion: ICOBS 5.2 on a protection call
Demands and needs under ICOBS 5.2 applies whether or not advice is given; suitability under ICOBS 5.3 only where it is. Both written as criteria a protection call can pass or fail, labelled rule, guidance or firm standard, with replacement business as the worked example.
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Non-disclosure starts on the call: checking what the customer said against the application
Under CIDRA 2012 the duty not to misrepresent is the customer's, owed to the insurer. But the question the adviser actually asked is on the recording. Set beside the application, it shows whether the answer reached the form intact, and a recording of the sale call is evidence the Financial Ombudsman Service names.
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Vulnerable customer call monitoring: what FG21/1 actually expects
FG21/1 is guidance, not a rulebook, which makes it harder to evidence rather than easier. The FCA's 2025 review named the hard case precisely: vulnerability that is detectable but never disclosed. That happens out loud, on the call.
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PECR and TPS in 2026: practical compliance for outbound teams
Regulation 21 is not a consent rule. What it actually prohibits on a live marketing call, what regulation 24 requires the agent to say, and which of the rules on that call are not PECR at all.
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FCA Consumer Duty: 7 things to evidence, and where each one lives
Only PRIN 2A.5 and 2A.6 are visible in a conversation. Five things the recording has to evidence, two the file and the product governance record carry, why a 5% sample cannot show either, and what we found on whether FCA rules require protection and mortgage advisers to record sales calls.
Running QA
Coverage, sampling and what changes in a compliance team when every call is scored rather than 5%.
How the scoring works
Plain-English explanations of the technology, including what it is not good at.
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AI vs human call scoring: when each makes sense
An honest comparison from someone selling AI scoring tooling. What AI is genuinely better at, what humans still beat AI on, and the right division of labour for production QA teams.
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What is AI call QA and how does it actually work?
A plain-English walkthrough of how speech recognition, large language models and per-tenant calibration combine to score your team's calls against your scorecard.
See the evidence behind a verdict on one of your own criteria.
We run demos on synthetic calls, so nothing of yours is processed before a data processing agreement is in place. We usually reply the same working day.
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