Most regulated firms are dealing with the same two pressures at once, though they rarely arrive in the same conversation.
The first is the one you can see. A website that could belong to any firm within thirty miles. Client communications that go unread. A quarterly newsletter even your own staff have stopped looking at. The intellectual capital that actually sets your firm apart, the reasoning, the judgement, the accumulated knowledge of years, tends to stay entirely hidden. That is not really a marketing problem. It is a structural one.
The second is less visible but more pressing. Since Consumer Duty came into force, the documentation burden on small IFA practices has grown considerably. Fair Value Assessments. Target Market Assessments. Outcomes Monitoring Frameworks. Vulnerable Customer Policies. Annual board-level evidence reviews. These are documents the FCA fully expects to find on examination, and in most small practices they are either absent or not written to the standard required.
I address both. Substantive financial writing on one side, Consumer Duty documentation on the other. That is not a combination you will find easily elsewhere, and it is what makes this practice worth your time.
‘’ I don’t just write copy. I engineer compliance. Every piece I produce is constructed in line with prevailing laws, rules and regulations, reducing compliance friction and protecting your reputation.‘’
The advice is excellent.
Nobody sees the advice.
The sample packs are there precisely so you can make that judgement before committing to anything.
LEGAL FOUNDATION
Edinburgh & the City
1980s-1990s
Precision. Evidence.
Regulatory rigour.
MARKET EXPERIENCE
Traded own account
across equities & derivatives
Real money. Real
Consequences. Real insight.
PUBLISHING
Investment publication
early 2000s
3,000-word features.
Complex subjects made
genuinely readable.
I write substantive, regulatory-grounded material for FCA-authorised firms working in pensions, investments and wealth management. That includes independent financial advisers, chartered financial planners, discretionary fund managers, retirement specialists and wealth management boutiques.
Each commission produces three integrated documents. A client-facing guide of 12 to 20 pages that educates prospects and builds the kind of trust that makes your firm the natural choice. A full compliance assessment mapping each section against applicable regulatory standards. And a marketing deployment guide that covers website integration, email campaigns, LinkedIn, referral partners and client events.
01
12-20 pages of substantive
content that educates
prospects and builds trust
EDUCATES & CONVERTS
02
Section-by-section analysis against prevailing regulatory standards
ACCELERATES SIGN-OFF
03
Channel-specific strategies
with verified industry
benchmarks
DRIVES DISTRIBUTION
2-3 WEEKS
AT YOUR PACE
20-30 minutes
Agree brief, audience, and compliance needs
2-3 WEEKS
Drafting, regulatory cross-referencing, editorial quality control
AT YOUR OWN PACE
You and your compliance team review the pack. One revision round included
Final Pack in a format of your choice, branded, designed and distribution ready.
No complicated onboarding. No drawn-out discovery phases.
Under Consumer Duty, delivering ongoing service is not enough on its own. Firms must also hold documented proof that the service has genuinely been provided. A firm using my market commentary copy as client-facing material builds a timestamped, professionally produced record of service delivery across its entire client base, one that satisfies not only the demands of good retention marketing but the documentary requirements the FCA expects to find on examination.
Consumer Duty has created a specific and sizeable documentation requirement, and most small IFA practices are still working out how to meet it. The FCA’s position on this is clear: you need to be able to produce evidence of good outcomes, not simply say that you achieved them.
I produce the five core Consumer Duty documents that firms are required to have in place and that most financial writers are simply not in a position to draft properly.
Every deliverable includes a written compliance assessment mapping content against applicable provisions.
A detailed analysis of your charges set against the benefits actually delivered, covering all client segments including vulnerable clients and any cross-subsidies in the model. Board-ready and written to the standard of evidence the FCA expects to find when it comes knocking.
Individual TMAs for each product or service on your panel, including the negative target market. These are regulatory documents, not marketing copy, and they read accordingly.
The written framework specifying what your firm measures across the consumer outcome areas.
Full written policies covering identification, response and ongoing monitoring. Required under FG21/1. Most small practices are working from something drafted quickly and never properly reviewed.
Ghost-writing the annual board-level outcomes review that every firm is required to produce and retain. This tends to be high value, recurring, and the document that most principals find hardest to write without someone alongside them who actually understands what the FCA is looking for.
My background matters here. Training as a Cost Lawyer meant spending years doing exactly what a Fair Value Assessment requires: going through charges line by line, asking whether they were reasonable, whether the benefit justified the cost, and whether the whole thing could stand up to scrutiny. I have been doing that kind of analysis, in one form or another, for most of my professional life. It just had a different name before Consumer Duty arrived.
Four complete resource packs are available to download. Each one contains the client-facing guide, the FCA compliance assessment and the marketing deployment guide. These are finished pieces of work, produced to exactly the same standard as anything I produce. Have a read and draw your own conclusions.
There is also a Consumer Duty Documentation Guide available to download: a plain-English walkthrough of the seven documentary requirements the FCA expects to find on examination at any IFA firm. Work through the checklist and you will have a fairly clear picture of where the gaps are.
Top-of-funnel.
The undecided prospect.
Highest-value Segment.
Pre-retirees 55-65
Retention + Acquisition.
Double duty.
Between Review Analysis and Communication
I am looking for five firms willing to be among the first to commission bespoke work. You receive a complete resource pack, professionally designed and branded with your firm’s identity, ready for compliance review. The fee for this is £795 rather than the standard rate of £1,295. In return, I ask only for permission to reference the project as a case study and, once the work has met your standards, a testimonial.
YOUR INVESTEMENT
Complete resource pack at founding client rate
Includes:
Client guide
Compliance assessment
Marketing deployment guide
acquires
just one client
YEAR 1
£300K x 1% fee
10 YEARS
lifetime revenue
Return on Investement
Before accounting for portfolio growth
Forbes Building, Devil’s Tower Road, Gibraltar
Al Miller – Financial Communication Specialist.
10 minutes walk from the Gibraltar–Spain border. Near Holiday Inn Express. 5 minutes from
the World Trade Center.
UK time +1 hour.
Calls, emails, and video meetings operate on UK working hours.
