FCA Issues Guidance On Digital Design In Customers' Online Journeys

We've written a lot about online choice architecture (OCA), that is, how websites and platforms are designed to "nudge" customers into making certain transactional decisions. Regulators have concerns that some elements of platform design might not always be in consumers' best interests. The EU plans to deal with dark patterns in the forthcoming Digital Fairness Act (and there are already some rules in the EU's Digital Services Act) and UK law protects consumers from unfair OCA under the rules about unfair commercial practices in the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024.

However, it's not just the obvious bodies such as the CMA which take an interest in OCA. The FCA has recently published a report about the design of digital acquisition journeys and customer outcomes in the consumer credit market. Following some earlier research on digital design and sludge practices, it wanted to see how firms acquire customers through digital channels and how they