Targeted Support Is Now Live: What IFAs Actually Need to Know
The FCA's targeted support framework is no longer a consultation paper or a future possibility. It's live. And for IFAs who've spent years watching clients fall through the gap between generic guidance and full regulated advice, this matters.
But let's be honest: the rules are new, the boundaries are untested, and the gap between what targeted support could be and what it safely can be is where regulatory trouble lives.
Here's what you actually need to understand.
What Targeted Support Actually Is
Targeted support sits in the middle ground between guidance (which anyone can give) and regulated advice (which requires a personal recommendation). The FCA created it specifically to address the advice gap—the millions of people who need help with financial decisions but can't afford or access full advice.
Under the new framework, firms can offer support that's more specific than generic guidance without it automatically becoming regulated advice. The key distinction: you can help someone understand what might be generally suitable for people in their situation, without making a personal recommendation about what they specifically should do.
Think of it as: "People in your circumstances often find X helpful" rather than "You should do X."
The Numbers Behind the Change
The FCA's own research found that only 8% of UK adults received regulated financial advice in the past year. Meanwhile, around 20 million adults have investable assets but aren't getting professional help with them.
That's a lot of people making pension decisions, investment choices, and retirement plans based on Google searches and newspaper articles. The regulator's position is clear: this isn't working, and something needed to change.
Targeted support is their answer. Whether it actually closes the gap depends on how firms implement it—and whether they can do so without tripping over the advice boundary.
Where the Lines Actually Are
This is where it gets practical, and where most IFAs will have questions.
What you can do under targeted support:
- Segment clients by characteristics (age, income bracket, life stage) and provide guidance relevant to that segment
- Use tools and calculators that suggest options based on inputted information
- Explain the pros and cons of different product types for someone in a particular situation
- Help someone understand whether they might benefit from full advice
What still requires full regulated advice:
- Any personal recommendation about a specific product for a specific person
- Telling someone what they should do with their money
- Recommendations that take into account someone's complete financial circumstances
The distinction sounds clear on paper. In practice, conversations drift. A client asks "so what would you do?" and suddenly you're in murky water.
The Compliance Reality
Here's what the FCA will be watching: consistency between what you say targeted support is and what it actually looks like in practice.
If your targeted support conversations routinely end with clients taking specific actions on specific products, the regulator will ask whether you were really providing guidance or whether you'd crossed into advice territory without the appropriate protections.
Documentation matters. If you're offering targeted support, you need clear records showing:
- What segment or criteria the support was based on
- What information was provided
- That no personal recommendation was made
- That the client understood the limitations of what they received
What This Means for Your Social Media
Targeted support changes what you can say publicly, too. The FCA has been explicit that financial promotions need to match the service being offered.
If you're promoting targeted support services on LinkedIn or other platforms, your posts need to be clear about what clients will and won't receive. Implying that targeted support is equivalent to full advice—or that it removes the need for advice—will attract scrutiny.
The same financial promotion rules apply. Fair, clear, not misleading. Balanced risk warnings where required. No cherry-picked performance figures.
The difference now is that you have a new service category to explain accurately. Get the description wrong in a social post, and you've created a compliance problem before a client even contacts you.
The Opportunity and the Risk
Targeted support genuinely could help IFAs serve more people. It creates a legitimate pathway to help clients who need more than guidance but aren't ready for (or can't afford) full advice.
But it also creates new ways to get things wrong. The advice boundary hasn't moved—it's just that there's now an official space right next to it. Operating in that space requires precision.
The firms that benefit most will be those who build clear processes, train their staff properly, and document everything. The firms that struggle will be those who treat targeted support as advice-lite and assume the rules are more relaxed than they are.
They aren't. The FCA has simply given you more room to help people. What you do in that room still needs to be compliant.
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