Feedback from the FCA’s most recent vulnerable customer review highlighted the great work firms were doing. However, they also raised key areas for improvement, specifically relating to how firms improve outcome monitoring, support their staff to identify customers in vulnerable circumstances, and provide demonstrable ways to show the FCA that they had embedded the needs of these customers into their product and service processes and provided tailored training for staff.
Firms were reminded that, under the guidance, they should ensure that relevant staff understand how their role affects the fair treatment of customers in vulnerable circumstances, and ensure frontline staff have the skills and capability to recognise and respond to a range of characteristics of vulnerability.
In our recent webinar ‘Operationalising Vulnerability: Equip Your Frontline to Identify and Support Vulnerable Customers’, we polled 783 senior financial services professionals on their confidence around customer vulnerability. Just 5% of respondents said they were very confident in their frontline staff’s ability to recognise and respond to potential characteristics of vulnerability based on their current training.
In this discussion paper, Chris Adlard, Director of CX and Compliance at Elephants Don’t Forget, is joined by Andy Harrison, Senior Manager and Vulnerable Consumers Lead at Fidelity International, and Martin Canwell from Aptean, to discuss the FCA’s review and examine how firms can:
- Stay ahead of FCA expectations
- Integrate vulnerability into product and service design
- Ensure appropriate support for the frontline (including wellbeing)
- Establish a business-wide culture of vulnerability awareness and drive continuous improvement
