Watch: FCA’s vulnerable customers update: key insights for firms…
Hi all,
I was pleased to attend last week’s update on vulnerable customers guidance at FCA HQ in London.
You’ve no doubt already seen many posts summarising the event, so this blog isn’t an attempt to re-iterate all that. Instead, I’d like to draw out the most important recommendations, and specifically the key role that employee competence plays in your vulnerable customers’ programmes.
When it comes to delivering good customer outcomes, for both vulnerable and resilient customers, process and operational improvements alone will simply not cut it!
By improving the competence of staff, your firm can truly embed the customer-focused culture that is required to effectively identify and manage vulnerable customers.
Staff competence: recent FCA vulnerability review finds that:
- Few firms are training product and service design staff on vulnerability – and training is not tailored to role. 50% of firms the FCA surveyed said staff training was not tailored in their firm.
- Most firms the FCA engaged with could not show how they had embedded the needs of customers in vulnerable circumstances into their product and service design processes.
- In their multi-firm work on firms’ outcomes monitoring, they found firms often relied on data that lacked breadth and granularity.
- Many firms pointed to actions they had taken to make improvements for customers in vulnerable circumstances. But FCA saw limited evidence of firms consistently reviewing the effectiveness of actions.
- FCA likes to see the wellbeing of frontline staff managed and improved and to make sure they are supported to have complex interactions with customers.
How Clever Nelly can help…
- Find out how Clever Nelly is supporting firms in this area by visiting our vulnerable customers solution page for more information.
- Watch our webinar – Customer Vulnerability: Actions and priorities from the FCA’s latest review – with Money Advice Trust and Bovill Newgate. We unpack the details of the review and identify the pinch points and challenges your firm will have to prioritise and overcome to meet the regulator’s exacting standards of support for vulnerable customers.