The Consumer Duty MI your board report actually needs
The board report is the output of monitoring. The MI in it is the dictionary of what your monitoring found — and the four numbers below tell the whole story.
What the FCA expects from monitoring MI
Monitoring management information is how a firm demonstrates, openly and honestly, that its retail customers are getting good outcomes. The FCA has made outcomes monitoring a standing priority, and its Consumer Duty pages set out the expectations firms are measured against.
The Consumer Duty publications library collects the FCA's good and poor-practice material, including what monitoring MI should look like when it is meaningful and what it looks like when it is paper-thin. the Consumer Duty publications library is where those examples sit.
The four numbers
Four metrics carry the story of a quarter. Each answers a question a board — or a reviewer — will ask.
Pass-rate trends
The percentage of files scoring Pass overall, across quarters. The trend — up, down, flat — is the signal.
Check-area breakdowns
Which check areas fail most: vulnerability documentation, cost disclosure, capacity for loss. This is where the fixes target.
Service delivery
The ongoing-service record: reviews delivered on time, next-review dates met, and any fee-for-no-service flags.
Vulnerability counts
The vulnerability signals logged, the outcomes, and whether adjustments were documented. The FCA keeps looking at this evidence.
A board report that shows these four numbers — with the trend and the fixes — is evidence. One that shows intentions is not.
How the four fit together
The four numbers matter more as a trend than as absolute scores. A pass rate below target that is rising, with the fixes attached, tells a board more than a single percentage ever will.
Across the year the four numbers roll into the annual assessment cycle: the trends, the themes, and the fixes become the evidence base for the yearly review.
Worked example: the same quarter reported twice
The same quarter of monitoring produces very different reports. Compare the two versions (anonymised, illustrative).
Before
“Reviewed 40 files; no systemic issues.” — counts without trends, breakdowns, or owners.
After
“Pass rate 87% to 91%. Top failure: cost disclosure. Three service gaps closed. Two vulnerability adjustments logged with owners. All fixes re-scored before the next quarter.”
Common mistakes in the dashboard
- Reporting counts without trends. One quarter's pass rate means little; the direction across quarters is the signal.
- Hiding the failing check areas. Averages smooth away the place the fix is needed — the breakdown is where the next review targets.
- Ignoring the service record. A dashboard with no service-delivery line cannot see the fee-for-no-service risk building underneath it.
- Showing numbers without fixes. The “so what” column is what turns MI into evidence; a reviewer will ask what changed because of it.
The dashboard at a glance
| Metric | What to show | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Pass-rate trend | Pass rate by quarter, not just this quarter. | Direction is the signal. |
| Check-area breakdowns | Failures by check area. | It shows where the next fix targets. |
| Service delivery | Reviews met against reviews due. | It surfaces fee-for-no-service risk. |
| Vulnerability counts | Signals logged and outcomes recorded. | It shows consideration actually happened. |
| Fix tracking | Ambers and fails with owners and dates. | It closes the loop in front of the board. |
Related reads
The dashboard is one layer of the outcomes cycle — start at the outcomes monitoring hub for the whole picture, see the one-hour quarterly process for the smallest version that produces it, and what a request asks to see for how the MI gets tested.
Frequently asked questions
What if a quarter shows no issues at all?
A clean quarter still needs the four numbers. The pass-rate trend, the check-area breakdown, the service record, and the vulnerability count all have to be shown — a dashboard that only reports “no issues” leaves the evidence gap the review is meant to close.
Who should the dashboard go to?
The board, in the form of the board summary. The dashboard is the underlying data; the board report is the one page that reports it with trends and fixes, which is what an information request will read.
Your next step
Run the quarter and report it in four numbers — the pass-rate trend, the check-area breakdown, the service record, and the vulnerability count — then attach the fixes. Proven Duty produces all four from its file review. Start with a free trial or see pricing.
See where your evidence currently lands: grade your firm's evidence in 4 minutes.