FCA Record-Keeping Requirements for Financial Advisers

What records must financial advisers retain?

The general obligation sits in SYSC 9.1. SYSC 9.1.1R — which applies to a firm other than a common platform firm — requires orderly records of the firm's business and internal organisation, including all services and transactions undertaken, sufficient to enable the FCA to monitor compliance and in particular to ascertain that the firm has complied with all obligations to clients. Common platform firms are subject to the parallel requirement in SYSC 9.1.1AR. Chapter-specific requirements then layer on top — for suitability, in COBS 9.5 and COBS 9A.4.

The useful working test is reconstructability. A reviewer arriving at the file with no prior knowledge should be able to establish what the client wanted, what their circumstances were, what was recommended, why it was suitable, what was explained, and when each of those happened. If any of those cannot be answered from the file, the record is incomplete regardless of its length.

Suitability evidence

Under COBS 9A.4.2AR, a firm must keep a record of its compliance with the assessment and disclosure obligations for each suitability assessment it undertakes. For investment advice to a retail client, that record must include the time and date the advice was provided, the financial instrument recommended, and the suitability report provided to the client.

Note the emphasis on time and date. This is not administrative trivia — it establishes whether the advice was given before or after a market event, a client circumstance change, or a product change, and it is routinely decisive in complaint handling.

Client objectives and circumstances

The file should record objectives in terms specific enough to test the recommendation against, and the financial circumstances as at the date of the advice. Circumstances recorded at onboarding and never refreshed are a common weakness: a recommendation assessed against three-year-old income and liability figures has not been assessed against the client's actual position.

Recommendations and rationale

The rationale is the load-bearing part of the file. It should explain why this recommendation suits this client, and should identify the alternatives considered and why they were set aside. A rationale that would read identically for any client with the same risk score evidences a segmentation decision, not a suitability assessment.

Attitude to risk and capacity for loss

These must be recorded separately, because they are separate assessments — one subjective, one objective — and a client can sit at opposite ends of the two. Recording a single blended risk score satisfies neither. The FCA suitability requirements guide covers this distinction and the evidence each requires; the documenting suitability and risk guide covers how to capture them in practice.

Meeting records

Meeting records occupy a particular position: they are usually the only contemporaneous account of what was actually said. A suitability report is a considered document written afterwards; the meeting record is the evidence that the conversation supporting it took place. Where a firm relies on the meeting as the source for the suitability record, retaining that source alongside the summary is what makes the summary defensible.

Record retention periods

The table below sets out the positions most relevant to advice firms. Firms should confirm the periods applicable to their own permissions and product mix rather than adopting a single default.

The practical consequence of SYSC 9.1.2BG is worth stating plainly: a uniform five-year deletion policy is a compliance risk, not a safe default. For any client relationship lasting longer than five years, deleting the suitability record at five years would breach COBS 9A.4.3R. Retention schedules need to be driven by relationship status, not solely by record age.

COBS 9 and COBS 9A record-keeping

It is worth being precise about which chapter is which, because the two are frequently transposed. COBS 9A is the MiFID and insurance-based investment products chapter. COBS 9 covers suitability other than for MiFID business and insurance-based investment products. The COBS 9A requirements guide sets out the COBS 9A obligations in full.

Where both apply within a firm, maintaining a single documentation standard set to the higher of the two requirements is generally more robust than operating parallel standards. It removes the need for a per-file determination of which regime governed, which is itself a frequent source of error.

SYSC record-keeping considerations

SYSC 9 supplies the general framework the COBS chapters sit within. Two features matter operationally. First, the obligation is the firm's, not the individual adviser's — departing staff do not take the obligation with them, and incomplete files they leave behind remain the firm's exposure. Second, SYSC 9.1.2CR requires records to be held in a medium that allows the FCA to access them readily and to reconstitute each key stage.

“Readily accessible” has bite. Records technically retained but scattered across individual mailboxes, local drives and a legacy CRM may not meet the standard in any practical sense, even though nothing has been deleted.

Consumer Duty evidence

Set out in PRIN 2A, the Duty shifts the evidential question. A file demonstrating that every procedural step was completed does not, by itself, demonstrate a good outcome. The consumer understanding and consumer support outcomes in particular require evidence about the client's comprehension — what was explained, in what terms, and what indication there was that it landed.

This is difficult to evidence retrospectively from a suitability report alone, because the report records what the firm told the client rather than what the client understood. Contemporaneous meeting records are considerably better placed to show the latter.

Audit trails

An audit trail is the record of how the file came to be in its current state: who created or amended each element, when, and in what order. Its regulatory value is that it distinguishes a contemporaneous record from a reconstruction. A suitability note dated the day of the meeting but demonstrably written eight months later, after a complaint, carries very different weight.

For an audit trail to serve that function it needs to be append-only. A log that can be edited by the same people whose actions it records does not evidence much. Timestamps, user identity, and immutability are the three properties that make a trail worth having.

How firms can improve consistency

Most record-keeping failures found in file reviews are not failures of knowledge. Advisers generally know what belongs in a suitability file. The failure is variance — files differ in quality by adviser, by workload, and by how long after the meeting the write-up happened.

Three changes reduce variance more than additional training:

• Structure the record, not just the process. Where each required element has its own field, an omission is visible immediately rather than at the next file review.
• Capture at the point of the meeting. The gap between meeting and write-up is where detail is lost, and it is the gap that widens under pressure.
• Retain the source alongside the summary. The summary is the record; the meeting evidence is what supports it. Keeping only the former leaves the record unsupported.

Technology helps with each, but the limits should be stated clearly. Structured capture improves consistency and makes gaps visible; it does not make the suitability judgement, and it does not guarantee regulatory compliance. Adviser and compliance review remains essential. You can see how TakeNote supports FCA compliance processes and where human review is required.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• FCA Handbook, SYSC 9.1 — General rules on record-keeping
• FCA Handbook, COBS 9A.4 — Record keeping and retention periods for suitability records
• FCA Handbook, COBS 9.5 — Record keeping and retention periods for suitability records
• FCA Handbook, PRIN 2A — The Consumer Duty

This article is general information for financial services professionals and is not legal or compliance advice. Firms should refer to the FCA Handbook and their own compliance function.