The FCA’s new non-financial misconduct framework takes effect on 1 September 2026. For the approximately 37,000 non-bank firms now in scope, the countdown is on. But readiness is not just about updating policies. It is about whether your organisation can demonstrate, with evidence, that it is actively managing the culture and behaviours that the regulator now considers material conduct risks (FCA, PS25/23).
Here are seven warning signs that your firm may not be as prepared as it thinks.
Annual surveys have become the default tool for measuring workplace culture. The problem is well-documented. Response rates are inconsistent, results are skewed by social desirability bias, and by the time the data is analysed, the moment has passed. A survey taken in January tells you very little about what is happening on the ground in July.
The FCA’s February 2025 culture guidance makes clear that firms need to demonstrate healthy culture through ongoing evidence, not periodic snapshots (FCA, Culture Guidance 2025). If your primary evidence of cultural health is a survey that happens once a year, you have a significant gap to close before September 2026.
What good looks like: Continuous, objective behavioural data drawn from real workplace interactions, providing a rolling view of cultural health that can be presented to regulators at any point.
Ask a line manager in your organisation to define non-financial misconduct. If the answer is vague or limited to extreme examples, you have a training problem that goes beyond updating a policy document.
Under COCON 1.1.7FR, non-financial misconduct includes any unwanted conduct that violates a person’s dignity or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating, or offensive environment. This definition deliberately extends beyond protected characteristics under the Equality Act to capture a broader range of workplace behaviours (Dechert, 2026).
Managers need to understand this spectrum, from everyday micro-behaviours through to serious misconduct, and recognise that the patterns of minor, unchallenged behaviour are often what normalise poor conduct over time.
What good looks like: Managers who can identify the behavioural patterns that sit on the continuum between healthy communication and misconduct, supported by data that makes those patterns visible.
Under COCON 2.1.2R, managers who knew or could reasonably have known about non-financial misconduct, and had the authority to intervene but failed to do so, can be found in breach of the due skill, care, and diligence conduct rule (CMS Law-Now, 2025).
Most firms cannot demonstrate what steps a manager actually took when a conduct issue arose. There is no objective record of management engagement, responsiveness, or team interaction patterns. When the FCA asks whether a manager intervened, the answer often comes down to competing narratives.
What good looks like: Objective communication data showing how managers engage with their teams, enabling firms to evidence whether managers are accessible, responsive, and actively engaged, or disconnected from the day-to-day reality of their teams.
Interpersonal misconduct investigations are notoriously difficult. They frequently become disputes where subjective accounts conflict, and outcomes can depend on who is more credible or more senior. This is precisely the power dynamic the FCA is trying to disrupt.
PS25/23 expects documented findings, consistent disciplinary procedures, proportionate sanctions, and credible outcomes that can withstand regulatory scrutiny (Osborne Clarke, 2025). Firms that rely solely on testimony are building investigations on an inherently fragile foundation.
What good looks like: Investigation processes supported by objective, time-stamped behavioural data that can corroborate or challenge claims, reducing the influence of bias and power imbalances on outcomes.
The FCA expects firms to identify scenarios where employees may be reluctant to raise concerns about non-financial misconduct, including assessing power dynamics, reporting barriers, and vulnerable employee populations.
Power dynamics and reporting barriers are invisible in traditional HR data. You cannot see them in an org chart, a headcount report, or even an engagement survey. Employees who feel unable to speak up are, by definition, unlikely to tell you they feel unable to speak up.
What good looks like: Communication network analysis that reveals the real influence and information flows within your organisation, identifying individuals or teams that are isolated, excluded, or dependent on a single dominant figure for access and recognition.
Every financial services firm faces the same fundamental question. What does good conduct actually look like in practice? And yet most organisations are developing their answers independently, each building their own frameworks, running their own training programmes, and hoping for the best.
This is an industry-wide challenge that deserves industry-wide solutions. The FCA has signalled clearly that it expects firms to take this seriously. Organisations that can demonstrate they are collaborating to raise standards, rather than simply ticking boxes in isolation, will carry more credibility with the regulator (Regulation Tomorrow, 2025).
What good looks like: Participation in collaborative programmes where firms develop shared frameworks, common conduct language, and industry-level benchmarks. The Leadership Programme from FinTech-Tables and SolasOS was built for exactly this purpose, bringing 5 to 8 financial services organisations together to move from isolated compliance to collective leadership.
This is perhaps the most telling sign of all. If the leaders setting the cultural tone in your organisation have never seen objective data about their own communication patterns, they are operating on assumption rather than evidence.
Most leaders believe they are approachable, inclusive, and open to challenge. The data frequently tells a different story. Long messages, low question-asking, a tendency to close down discussion rather than open it. These patterns are invisible without data, but they directly shape the culture that either prevents or enables misconduct.
The Leadership Programme calls this “The Mirror Moment”, using personal analytics from SolasLite to show leaders how their communication patterns truly shape the environment around them. It is consistently the most powerful catalyst for genuine behavioural change.
What good looks like: Leaders who have confronted their own communication data, identified the gaps between intention and impact, and committed to measurable behavioural change linked directly to their SM&CR fitness and propriety obligations.
The September 2026 deadline is less than six months away. If your organisation recognises itself in several of these warning signs, the time to act is now, not because the regulator demands it, but because your people deserve a workplace where misconduct is identified and addressed before it causes harm.
The Leadership Programme provides a structured pathway from where most firms are today (reactive and compliance-driven) to where the best firms will be tomorrow (proactive, evidence-based, and collaborating to set the standards that the rest of the industry follows).
Ready to act?
Applications are now being accepted for the Non-Financial Misconduct Leadership Programme from FinTech-Tables and SolasOS, designed for financial services organisations preparing for the next phase of regulatory change.
To learn more, visit https://fintech-tables.com/events/non-financial-misconduct-leadership-programme/
I specialise in bringing about change and behaviourally-led growth at organisation, team and individual level.
After 13 years in FS at what is now Aviva, I emerged as an ACII, MBA and senior manager from its multiple mergers. I was determined to apply my learning from these transformative changes to help people and organisations grow through disruption.
24 years later, my work in that has taken me to 15 countries across multiple sectors, including Financial Services.
My businesses in Leadership (Actif4) and Change (Initiate) challenge people and organisations to be future-focused, spiced with applied learning from the past.
With SolasOS, alongside Iain Hamilton, the next stage of development is underway — applying next-gen technology in providing deep insight on very human challenges — all to help people and their organisations to grow and bring about successful change.
It is great to see the Financial Services embracing the FinTech sector, and I am excited by the potential that we bring with Solas-OS to broaden the FinTech impact more fully across Financial Services’ people and cultures.
