A Get SAFE warning for citizens, savers, and investors
There is a quiet but dangerous shift happening in UK financial regulation.
The Financial Conduct Authority has proposed changes that would make it easier for individuals to be classified as “professional investors” — even without significant wealth — provided they pass a subjective assessment by a financial firm.
At first glance, this may sound empowering.
In reality, it should ring alarm bells.
Because stepping beyond the regulatory perimeter doesn’t make you safer, smarter, or more sovereign.
It makes you less protected.
What does “outside the regulatory perimeter” really mean?
When you are treated as a retail consumer, the system — however imperfect — still recognises one essential truth:
Power, information, and risk are asymmetrical.
That is why retail protections exist:
- Clear risk warnings
- Suitability requirements
- Product restrictions
- Access to the Financial Services Compensation Scheme if a firm collapses
Once you opt into “professional” status, those protections fall away.
You are deemed capable of:
- Understanding complex risk structures
- Absorbing losses without recourse
- Accepting that you are on your own
And crucially — if things go wrong — you will be told:
“You chose this.”
Why the temptation is so strong (and so dangerous)
Financial firms often frame professional classification as a reward:
- Lower margin requirements
- Access to “exclusive” or higher-risk products
- Fewer warnings, less friction, faster execution
But these are not gifts.
They are risk transfer mechanisms.
What is being transferred?
- From institution → individual
- From balance sheet → citizen
- From regulated obligation → personal responsibility
The firm’s downside shrinks.
Yours expands.
The uncomfortable truth about “financial capital”
The industry narrative is seductive:
“With enough financial capital, leverage, and market access, you can grow real wealth.”
But this framing hides a critical distinction.
Financial capital grows industry wealth far more reliably than it grows yours.
Why?
- Fees are extracted whether you win or lose
- Risk is asymmetric
- Products are engineered to be tradable, not humane
- Volatility rewards intermediaries, not households
When things go well, gains are shared.
When things go badly, losses are individualised.
This is not a conspiracy.
It is the business model.
Professional in name does not mean protected in reality
A regulatory label does not confer:
- Emotional resilience
- Legal sophistication
- Structural power
- Protection against misaligned incentives
Most individuals — even intelligent, experienced ones — are not equipped to absorb engineered financial harm without long-term consequences.
Reclassification does not create capability.
It removes safeguards.
What Get SAFE sees when things go wrong
At Get SAFE, we support people after financial harm.
We see the patterns:
- Consumers encouraged to “opt up”
- Risk minimised in language
- Protections quietly signed away
- Redress blocked because status was “professional”
By the time people arrive at our door, the system is already saying:
“You were not a consumer anymore.”
That moment is often devastating.
A different path to real wealth
True wealth is not built primarily through financial capital.
It is built through:
- Human capital (skills, agency, adaptability)
- Decision-making capacity
- Life architecture before money architecture
- Clarity, not complexity
Financial products should serve life — not replace it.
When finance demands that you abandon protection in order to participate, that is not empowerment.
That is extraction.
A simple rule of thumb
If you are being tempted beyond the regulatory perimeter, ask yourself:
“Who benefits most if this goes wrong?”
If the answer is not “me”, pause.
Get SAFE guidance
- Do not confuse access with advantage
- Do not trade protection for promises
- Do not assume the system will catch you if you fall
Once you step outside the perimeter, there is no safety net.
And no label, test, or declaration will put it back.
Get SAFE exists because too many people were told they were sophisticated — right up until they weren’t protected.
Stay informed.
Stay cautious.
Stay inside the protections that exist for a reason.
Two very different meanings of “outside the regulatory perimeter”
1️⃣ A planner operating outside the perimeter
(because they don’t control your money)
A planner operating outside the regulatory perimeter in this sense:
- Does not hold, move, invest, or control your money
- Does not sell financial products
- Does not receive commissions, trail fees, or AUM-based income
- Does not tell you what to buy, sell, or switch
Instead, they:
- Help you think clearly
- Help you understand choices and consequences
- Help you design your life and financial architecture
- Support decision-making, not execution
In other words:
You remain sovereign.
The planner works with your thinking, not with your capital.
This is why such planners sit outside the regulatory perimeter:
they are not intermediating financial transactions, and therefore are not in a position to harm you financially through control.
Crucially:
- You keep all consumer protections with banks, platforms, and providers
- Your money stays inside regulated institutions
- No protections are waived
This model reduces risk — it does not increase it.
2️⃣ Someone inviting you outside the perimeter
(by asking you to hand over control or waive protection)
This is the dangerous version.
Here, “outside the perimeter” means:
- You are encouraged to opt out of retail status
- You may be reclassified as a professional client
- You lose safeguards such as FSCS protection and enhanced disclosures
Typically, this happens when someone:
- Wants to manage your money
- Wants to sell you higher-risk products
- Wants to reduce their regulatory obligations
- Wants you to accept more downside so they carry less
In this scenario:
Control moves away from you. Protection disappears.
This is not empowerment.
It is risk transfer.
The key difference in one sentence
A planner outside the perimeter protects your sovereignty.
A product-led professional classification removes your protection.
They sit on opposite sides of the ethical line.
Why this matters right now
The current regulatory drift risks blurring this distinction.
People may hear:
- “Outside the perimeter is bad”
and assume: - “All unregulated planners are risky”
That’s a mistake.
The real danger is not who is regulated —
it is who controls your money and who carries the risk.
A simple test citizens can use
Ask one question:
“Do you control my money — or do you help me control my decisions?”
- If they control your money → protections matter more than ever
- If they support your decisions → sovereignty is preserved
Get SAFE’s position (clearly stated)
- We support education, clarity, and agency
- We warn against pressure to waive protections
- We challenge models that grow industry wealth by shifting risk onto citizens
Planning should make you safer, calmer, and more capable.
If it requires you to give up protection to participate, something is wrong.
Academy of Life Planning 