The 2026 UK Contact Centre Conduct Risk Report

85.6% of regulated contact centre managers and directors are confident they could evidence fair treatment under Consumer Duty if the FCA reviewed them tomorrow. 54.0% have found a compliance breach or harm issue outside their routine QA sample.

Both of those things can't be comfortably true at once. New research with 285 FCA-regulated UK contact centres on what they can actually prove and what it already costs them when they can't.

Coverage is no longer the problem. Almost half now have AI reviewing every call. Things are still getting past them, and it's showing up in fines, refunds and lost customers.

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Independent research with 285 FCA-regulated UK contact centre managers and directors. Covers detection, commercial pressure, cost, and time-to-consequence - with five questions for your next Consumer Duty board report.

85.6% are confident they could evidence fair treatment under Consumer Duty if the FCA reviewed them tomorrow.

54.0% have found a compliance breach or harm issue outside their routine QA sample. For 16.5%, it has happened more than once.

31.2% paid £50,000 or more in regulatory fines in the last twelve months.

3.08 days is the average time between a call and the agent getting feedback on it. Only 10.9% manage it inside a day.

77.5% agree that pushing sales or collections performance increases compliance risk — and it's the leaders setting those targets telling us so.

Confidence is high. Detection is patchy. The gap between them is already on the balance sheet.

Most QA research still argues that contact centres don't review enough calls. Our data says that argument is over: manual sampling and AI reviewing every call are now running almost neck and neck, at 49.5% and 46.7%.

So coverage isn't the constraint anymore, it's about what happens next.

This report looks at the part nobody has measured properly - the distance between a compliance problem happening on a call and anything changing because of it. It covers:

  • What regulated contact centres can actually evidence today, as opposed to what they're confident about
  • Where conduct risk concentrates, and why the teams under the most commercial pressure report the least detection
  • What the last twelve months have already cost in fines, lost revenue and lost customers
  • How long a finding takes to reach the agent it concerns, and what's holding that up
  • Five questions we think belong in a Consumer Duty board report this year

It's built for people who will be asked to prove something, not just to describe their process.

Conversation monitoring isn't the hard part: Coverage is largely settled. Roughly half of regulated operations already run automated review across every interaction. Things still get past them, and 42.1% say they've never found a breach outside their routine sample, which raises a harder question than it answers.

Conduct risk follows commercial pressure: 77.5% agree that pushing performance raises compliance risk. Split by team, the pattern inverts: the floors under the most commercial pressure are the most confident they could evidence fair treatment, and the least likely to have caught a breach outside their sample. We set out both readings of that, and which one is safe to assume about your own operation.

What it's already costing UK businesses: Fines, lost revenue and lost customers, with the full banding. 59.0% paid something in fines. 63.5% lost revenue to non-compliant sales. 50.2% lost at least one sale, contract or customer outright.

Time to consequence: The average gap between a call and agent feedback is 3.08 days. 37.2% take three days or longer. Asked what stops them reviewing more, respondents pointed at time, cost and headcount - 67.4% between them - not at technology.

Five questions for your next board report: Coverage, detection, speed, governance and evidence. None of them needs new technology to answer. Most operations will find at least one they can't answer today.

This report is built for the people who will be asked to produce the evidence:

  • Compliance and risk managers in FCA-regulated contact centres, who need to know how their evidence position compares to the market
  • QA and quality managers deciding what to do with findings, not just how many calls to sample
  • Operations directors carrying the tension between performance targets and conduct standards
  • Contact centre and customer experience directors in financial services, debt collection, insurance and utilities
  • Anyone writing a Consumer Duty board report and looking for questions worth putting in it
Compliance and Regulations
AI