A client who believes their plan came from a regulated source asks their accountant to help carry it out. The accountant sees the money move, and can state the protection position before it does.
What the FCA found
The FCA surveyed 18- to 40-year-olds who own investments or are considering them. Among the less experienced investors in that group, four in five had used AI for help with investing, and about two-thirds did so occasionally or regularly. 56% said they trust AI tools, against 47% for TV and radio, 46% for the press and 29% for social media influencers. Two-thirds expected to use AI more over the coming year.
On protection: 44% believed AI-generated financial information is regulated, 38% believed it acceptable to make an investment decision based only on AI output, and 32% thought they would receive compensation from the Financial Services Compensation Scheme or the Financial Ombudsman Service if AI advice went wrong.
On accuracy: 73% knew that AI can produce inaccurate information, and 86% understood the need to check the sources it references. Lucy Castledine, the FCA's director of consumer investments, said: "AI can help you research companies, understand jargon or explore options" before a decision is made.
The FCA also stated the regulatory line. General purpose AI chatbots are not regulated by it. A tool deployed specifically to provide financial advice would be likely to fall within its remit.
Redress when no authorised firm was involved
Most of those surveyed knew AI output can be wrong: 73% said so. The 32% who expected compensation would get none where no authorised firm was involved. The Financial Ombudsman Service handles complaints against firms it covers. The FSCS pays out when an authorised firm cannot meet claims against it. Both depend on an authorised firm having been involved. Where none was, there is no redress route. An accountant can state that as fact without giving regulated advice.
The same point applies to unregulated products, covered in the loan note warning.
Why the accountant sees it first
Accountants see decisions as money moving: a director's loan drawn down in March, a lump sum leaving the business account, a new brokerage name in the bank feed, a pension provider in the correspondence.
A client who has produced a plan themselves and wants a professional to agree with it goes to the professional they already pay. That is the risk described in the permission check: explaining the tax treatment of a step can sound, to the client, like approval of the step.
Answer the tax question, then say which part of the decision the answer does not cover.
The figures for one client
Illustration, using a made-up client. A limited company client, 37, two years into contracting through her own company, emails her accountant in September. She has £64,000 in the business account above what the company needs, has read that leaving it there is inefficient, and has a plan: a £30,000 dividend this year, £20,000 into a stocks and shares ISA, and a £20,000 employer pension contribution from the company. She wants the accountant to confirm the tax and process the dividend. She mentions that she checked it all first.
The reply separates the two lists and adds the protection point once: the plan she checked was not produced by a regulated source, so nothing about it is covered by the Ombudsman or the FSCS. That reply contains no advice and gives her back a decision she can still take with regulated advice.
What happens next
The FCA's own tips are to stay in the driving seat, verify the sources, and remember that past performance does not predict returns. A client who has read around a subject arrives better informed, and a financial planner picking up the conversation starts further along.
The accountant identifies which parts of the client's plan are regulated decisions, says so, and introduces the client to the financial planner. The financial planner documents suitability and takes responsibility for the recommendation. The tax mechanics stay with the accountant, who holds the company accounts. How an introduction runs and who does what set out the steps.
The FCA's Financial Lives 2024 survey found that 8.6% of UK adults had taken regulated financial advice in the previous twelve months, and 13% of the self-employed. A 37-year-old contractor with £64,000 of surplus company cash is outside the market the lang cat's State of Advice Report 2025 describes, where the average new client portfolio is £411,000. The advice gap sets out the size of it.
What is not settled
The FCA's research covered 18- to 40-year-olds who own or are considering investments. It says nothing about how a 62-year-old business owner approaching a sale uses these tools. The FCA has not published rules aimed at consumers using general-purpose AI for financial decisions; its position is the boundary statement above. Where a particular product falls is a question about that product.
The interaction with targeted support is open. A regulated regime for guidance short of full advice is arriving in a market where many of its intended audience already use free, unregulated AI tools. Whether targeted support draws those people back inside the perimeter will take more than one year of take-up data to show.
What is settled: general-purpose AI output is not regulated, no Ombudsman complaint or FSCS claim follows from it, and 44% of the young investors the FCA surveyed believe otherwise. Each of those statements is published and dated.
