CurveBlock
The FCA’s Consumer Duty requires firms to focus on customer outcomes across product governance, communications and after‑sales services. It emphasises clear communications, appropriate product design, and monitoring of outcomes for different customer groups. For platforms offering fractional interests in property or renewable projects, the Duty shifts attention from one‑off disclosures to the entire customer journey: from onboarding and risk explanation through to secondary market access and ongoing performance reporting.
Practically, platforms must ensure that descriptions of risks, fees and likely scenarios are understandable to a retail audience and that charging structures are fair and transparent. Firms are expected to test product features and communications with representative consumers, monitor whether customers receive the expected benefits, and act where evidence shows harm or poor value. Firms should also have governance and record‑keeping arrangements that enable them to demonstrate compliant decision making and remedial action when needed.
For fractional real‑asset offers this has implications for how risks linked to illiquidity, property maintenance, grid constraints on small generators and intermediary counterparty risk are presented. Platforms should also consider vulnerable customers and ensure sales processes do not rely on complex jargon or assumptions about investor sophistication.
Retail investors evaluating fractional digital shares should expect clearer, outcome‑focused disclosures and evidence that platforms actively monitor whether investors are receiving the intended benefits. That regulatory emphasis is intended to raise standards of consumer protection across this emerging market.