Targeted Support Is Live: What Advisers Need to Know

Targeted support went live on 6 April 2026, and six months on, take-up among platforms and providers is accelerating fast. At the same time, the FCA is consulting on a separate set of reforms - CP26/10 - that would simplify suitability rules, move firms away from fixed annual reviews, and open the door to changes in trail commission. Together, these two reform tracks are the most significant shift to the advice landscape in years, and firms that treat them as a compliance footnote rather than a business decision risk losing ground.

What's actually changed since April

Under PS25/22, the FCA created a new regulated activity - targeted support - that lets providers and platforms give consumers suggestions based on people "like them," without going through the full advice process. Firms had to apply through the FCA's authorisation gateway to offer it, and the early months saw a scramble of applications rather than live propositions.

That's changed. Aviva received FCA approval to deliver targeted support in June, and by August, Hargreaves Lansdown had committed to rolling it out - tied, in part, to its involvement in the Money and Pensions Service's wider push to get more people engaging with their pensions and investments. Momentum is now visibly building among the large providers and platforms, which is exactly what the FCA hoped for when it described this as a "once-in-a-generation" change to the advice/guidance boundary.

For advice firms, the immediate implication is competitive rather than regulatory: the segment of clients you may have been reluctantly picking up because "nobody else would help them" now has a growing number of low-cost, provider-led alternatives.

The bigger story: CP26/10 and simplifying the advice rules

Targeted support isn't the only change in motion. In parallel, the FCA has proposed - via CP26/10 - to simplify the suitability rules that govern full regulated advice itself. The headline proposals include a single, more proportionate suitability framework, a shift from advisers gathering "exhaustive" client information to gathering what's "sufficient" for the decision at hand, more concise suitability communications, a move away from mandatory fixed annual reviews toward reviews based on actual client need, and - perhaps most consequentially for firm economics - the start of a formal conversation about modernising trail commission rules.

FCA deputy chief executive Sarah Pritchard summed up the intent plainly: "For too long the support people need has been out of reach for many." Qualification standards and adviser charging rules are untouched, but almost everything about how advice is delivered and reviewed is up for reconsideration.

Why this matters more than targeted support alone

Targeted support chips away at the bottom of the market. CP26/10 changes the economics of delivering full advice itself - potentially making it viable to serve clients profitably who were previously borderline, simply because the compliance overhead per client could fall. That's a genuine opportunity for firms willing to redesign their service proposition now, rather than waiting for final rules.

What this means for your business model

The mass-market squeeze

If your firm's growth strategy has relied on absorbing straightforward, lower-value clients almost as a courtesy, expect that pipeline to thin out as targeted support scales. That's not necessarily bad news - it frees up capacity - but only if you've already built a way to redeploy that capacity toward clients who still need, and will pay for, full advice.

Where full advice remains essential

Complex pension consolidation, inheritance tax planning, business owners extracting value from their company, blended families, cross-border assets - none of this is going anywhere near targeted support any time soon. If CP26/10's proposals land as drafted, delivering advice to these clients could become more efficient, but the need for a qualified human adviser won't diminish. If anything, demand for genuinely complex advice is likely to concentrate more tightly among firms who can prove they do it well.

Three practical steps to take now

First, revisit your ideal client profile. If it still includes straightforward, low-complexity cases you serve mainly to keep the pipeline full, decide deliberately whether that's still the right use of adviser time once targeted support is genuinely mainstream. Second, get ahead of CP26/10 rather than waiting for the policy statement - firms that have already mapped how a "sufficient information" standard and needs-based reviews would change their process will be ready to move the moment final rules land. Third, and most immediately actionable: if you're planning to concentrate on higher-value, higher-complexity clients, your appointment pipeline needs to reflect that shift now, not once the market has already repriced. This is precisely where working with a partner for qualified client appointment generation earns its keep - filling the diary with prospects who match your new, sharper ideal client profile, rather than the mixed bag many firms have historically relied on.

Where Fortis Connect fits in

We work with advice firms navigating exactly this kind of repositioning - supplying qualified client appointments aligned to a firm's actual target market, and providing the growth consultancy to help firms redesign their proposition, pricing and capacity around where the real value now sits. If you're rethinking who you serve and how, in light of targeted support and the CP26/10 proposals, that's a conversation worth having before your competitors have it first.

Want to talk through what these reforms mean for your firm specifically? Get in touch with Fortis Connect for a no-obligation conversation about qualified appointment generation and growth consultancy tailored to your repositioned client base.