15 Paradigm Think Piece A Practical Guide to Creating PDFs Creating a PDF takes only a few seconds, but it can significantly improve how information is presented to clients. By helping ensure documents remain consistent, accessible and easy to review, PDFs can play a small but valuable role in supporting good consumer outcomes and demonstrating a customerfocused approach to communication. This aligns with the FCA's focus on firms delivering information that consumers can understand and use effectively. The FCA expects firms to communicate information in a way that consumers can understand and act upon. As part of Consumer Duty, firms should consider whether their communications are clear, consistent and presented in a format that reduces the risk of misunderstanding. Whilst Microsoft Word documents remain a common way of drafting and sharing information, PDFs (Portable Document Format) offer several advantages when distributing documents to clients. Unlike Word files, PDFs preserve formatting regardless of the device being used, helping to ensure that important information appears exactly as intended. How could PDFs help your firm? • Maintain a professional and consistent appearance. • Prevent accidental alterations to documents. • Make important disclosures easier to read and review. • Share documents securely with clients. • Ensure documents display correctly across computers, tablets and smartphones. For firms providing suitability reports, disclosure information, client guides or other customer communications, converting documents to PDF can be a simple way to improve the customer experience and support positive Consumer Duty outcomes. Our top tips • Use meaningful headings to make documents easier to navigate. • Avoid excessive technical language. • Consider whether larger fonts might help some clients. • Check that important information is not hidden within images. • Test the document on a smartphone before sending. • Keep the file size reasonable when attaching to emails. full guide online Amarjot Butcher Senior Marketing Coordinator Open the doc then select File from the top menu. Choose Save As (or Save a Copy). Select the location where you want to save the document. Under Save as type, choose PDF (*.pdf). Click Save. Your document is now saved as a PDF and can be shared with clients or colleagues. If you do not have the desktop version of Office, there is still an easy alternative. Learn more
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