The Financial Conduct Authority is expecting to have spent over £5.5m on its advice guidance boundary review by April 2026.

In its final fees update for 2025/26 issued this week, the regulator shared that it had spent £1.9m on the review in 2024/25.

It expects to spend around £3.7m more on the advice guidance boundary review this year (2025/26), taking total costs to around £5.6m.

The review is part of the regulator’s plans to bridge the advice gap.

Earlier this week the FCA published its proposals on ‘targeted support’ which would allow firms to make financial guidance suggestions to groups of consumers with ‘common characteristics’.

The FCA has, however, decided not to progress for now its plans for so-called 'simplified advice', a cut-down version of full advice. It will consult on amendments to COBS 9/9A to create a clearer distinction between simplified and more holistic advice but has decided "not to progress" the proposals for a general bespoke simplified advice regime as outlined in DP23/5.

The FCA’s latest fees proposal update also confirmed that advice firms’ regulatory fees will increase by 2.8% from April.

While the funding requirement for fee-block A.13 (covering most advisers) will increase by 3.4% to £106.5m, fees will rise by the lower 2.8% level due to financial penalty revenues from 2024/25. The regulator estimated the financial penalty rebate for 2025/26 would be £70.5m.

The regulator expects to raise £38.7bn in tariffs from the adviser fee block in 2025/26, 0.6% higher than 2023/24, despite expecting the number of firms in the block to fall by 3.1% to 10,023.

Smaller regulated firms are set to be hit by higher fees with the regulator planning to increase its minimum fee, paid by small advice firms, by 25% to £2,200 a year by 2026/27. The minimum fee is currently £1,750 and will be £2,200 for 2025/26.

The regulator said the increase to the minimum fees is needed as they had not kept pace with inflation and, "no longer represented the minimum cost of being regulated". It added that it expects the increases to the minimum fee to end in 2025/26.