What’s the difference between guidance and rules?
Tony Crane and Andrew Gething look at Consumer Duty’s ‘guidance’ and ‘rules’ to unpick whether – in real-world terms – there is a difference between these and the implications of deciding to ignore guidance even when following rules. Tony leads Andrew back to the principle that firms should be delivering good outcomes and that everything supports this – and in that sense there is little difference between the two. More importantly, deciding to comply with one and not the other misses the overarching principle of delivering good outcomes and avoiding harms.
