Jenkins, who had turned down a trainee position as a commercial pilot for a role in financial services when he first started out, says getting financial services right for people was of utmost priority.
He says he does not believe either option poses a threat to financial advisers. It is not the FCA's intention to do so, he notes.
Liability a legitimate concern
But one area of legitimate concern he points to is what to do about liability when things go wrong.
"Advisers are rightly concerned about the overheads they have now, paying levies for compensation services and you know, indemnity insurance and all those sorts of things and they are quite extraordinary."
He says the liability for an expanded advice space cannot be passed on to advisers currently operating in the market, "that needs to be, if anything, looked at with a view to reducing that overhead rather than increasing that liability."
Jenkins says targeted support, despite being non-advised, cannot be free of liability either.
"If you are using data to enable you to make some kind of recommendation to groups of people or individuals based on groups of people then there's a responsibility, if nothing else, under the consumer duty to ensure that you're using the right data in the right ways for the right people."
It is about ensuring good outcomes, one of the core tenets of the consumer duty, he says.
He acknowledges the danger coming from social media, where unauthorised people could be seen giving guidance and even advice and not be held liable, but says introducing the FCA's proposed regime could help weed out those people "and help focus everybody on more established sources of information".
What's more, if people get used to getting authorised guidance along the way from an early age they might be more likely to recognise the value of advice later on when their needs become more complex, he adds.
A changing market?
There has been criticism the FCA's proposals, especially targeted support, could be favouring larger firms. But it could work either way, says Jenkins.
"When you change the regulation in a significant way like this, on the one hand it may seem that fits very well with that model of operating, that modus operandi, and you might say vertically integrated firms seem like the [beneficiaries]...it could work either way."
He explains an expansion of vertically integrated firms could put more of a spotlight on how such a service works and then create more scrutiny, making it more burdensome to place business with their own partner, a practice that, again, falls under the auspices of the consumer duty.
