Insights ¦ maps-standards-2025-1

Key Take Aways

1. The MaPS Standards, approved by the FCA, establish high-level quality and performance benchmarks for consumer-facing financial information, advice, and guidance services, ensuring consistency across delivery partners.
2. These standards are designed to foster services that are accessible, inclusive, and tailored to consumers’ needs, with particular emphasis on those in vulnerable circumstances or with accessibility needs.
3. The standards highlight the importance of designing services that incorporate consumer feedback, conduct robust testing, and evolve based on consumer insight to meet changing needs.
4. A key focus is on ensuring that information, advice, or guidance is impartial, independent, and delivered free at the point of access, with restrictions on selling or recommending financial products unless explicitly related to debt adjustment.
5. The standards emphasise channel-agnostic delivery, accommodating face-to-face, digital, telephonic, and other methods, ensuring reach and engagement irrespective of consumer preferences or technological advancements.
6. There is a strong mandate for providers to proactively identify and support consumers in vulnerable circumstances through tailored support and signposting to specialist services.
7. Performance management and monitoring are integral, with collaborative activities, regular reporting, and risk-based evaluation mechanisms designed to ensure ongoing compliance and continuous improvement.
8. The standards specify that quality assurance extends to managing complaints effectively, conducting root cause analysis, and leveraging feedback to refine service delivery.
9. Organisations must apply stringent data management practices, aligning with legislation, including secure storage, data accuracy, breach reporting, and enabling consumer data rights.
10. The standards reinforce the importance of staff training, professional development, and values alignment, ensuring practitioners have appropriate qualifications, CPD plans, and wellbeing support.
11. They clarify that regulatory requirements, including FCA obligations, take precedence over standards where conflicts arise, maintaining compliance integrity.
12. The lifecycle approach to service design, delivery, and management underscores MaPS’ strategic goal of directing resources towards those most in need, especially within a digital and technological context.

Key Statistics

• Implementation and compliance assessment are scheduled to begin by 1 April 2026.
• The standards reflect over three years of stakeholder engagement, including feedback from delivery partners, customers, and FCA input.
• Formal review processes are planned on a triennial basis to align with FCA’s monitoring cycles.

Key Discussion Points

• The overarching aim of the standards to deliver a consistent, high-quality consumer experience aligned with FCA approval.
• The relationship between the standards and current or future legislation, highlighting regulatory precedence.
• The importance of designing accessible, inclusive services that respond to consumer feedback and changing needs.
• The comprehensive approach to engaging consumers via multiple channels and removing barriers to access.
• The emphasis on delivering impartial, non-promotional guidance that supports informed decision-making without conflicts of interest.
• The role of proactive identification of vulnerable consumers and accessible service adjustments.
• The integration of performance management, continuous feedback loops, and shared learning to improve service quality.
• The significance placed on effective complaint handling as a tool for service enhancement.
• The requirement for robust data management and breach reporting processes to protect consumer personal data.
• Staff training standards, including the use of the Money Guidance Competency Framework and wellbeing considerations.
• The standards’ focus on ensuring services support consumers most in need, especially those facing financial or personal vulnerabilities.
• The strategic commitment of MaPS to embed these standards across all service delivery channels while fostering innovation and technological integration.

Document Description

This article is an overview of the MaPS Standards, approved by the FCA, which set out the high-level principles and requirements for delivering quality, impartial, and accessible financial guidance, advice, and information services. It covers the purpose, legislative context, monitoring mechanisms, and detailed standards for designing, delivering, and managing consumer services, with particular emphasis on vulnerable populations, regulatory alignment, and continuous improvement through performance management. The document aims to guide providers and stakeholders in ensuring compliance, consistency, and consumer-centred service delivery aligned with future regulatory expectations.