Treating Customers Fairly
Giles Custerson
Delivering Growth Strategies for Founders, Owners and Boards Senior Financial Services Leader I Founder I NED I
Treating customers fairly seems to be the flavour of the day with the Financial Conduct Authority and they are not shy about dishing out the punishment.
Last year some of the biggest names in financial services were fined in excess of ￡200m for failure to meet the FCA's principles of business. The two standouts were Barclays and Lloyds Banking Group fined ￡26m and ￡64m respectively for unfair treatment of customers in contravention of Principle 6 (A firm must pay due regard to the interests of its customers and treat them fairly).
It is difficult to understand how 2 stalwarts of the UK retail banking scene, that spend substantial sums telling us how consumer-centric they are, could get it so wrong. Their Treating Customer Fairness (TCF) policies will be amongst the best written and most comprehensive in their sector so it appears that they are simply not embedding the principles well enough within the fabric of their business.
The challenge appears to be in the word "fair". Ensuring that your products and services are fair and offer good value is actually highly complex and 3 dimensional. Consumers' perception of what constitutes fair value is constantly evolving driven by market forces such as competition and technology. To provide further complications both of these aspects are also central to the FCA's strategy so the current level of change in financial services is greater now than it has ever been.
Insurance is now the sector firmly in the FCA's sights. Again fair treatment of consumers is at the top of the "could do better" list. It will be interesting to see how they approach the challenge the FCA has set them. Will they " tick the boxes" or will they look to understood fairness and value as perceived by the consumer and ensure TCF is front and centre of how they do business.
What is clear from the Banking sector is that Insurers should not wait for the regulator to come knocking...
I help established businesses 10X their Sales Conversions by implementing our tried & tested sales ops systems
1 年Great read! Thanks for sharing Giles
Customer Service assistant
3 年I agree that Eurochange had very good customer service ethic. I for one always wanted the customer to walk away happy. However following on to prash comment I would just say after being made redundant I now work in a building society which has a high standard of customer service and as with Eurochange our customers come first especially in these challenging times. Giles nice that I saw your post .... I still smile about the mystery shop !! Hope you are well
Head of Marketing and Senior Business Advisor | Helping firms to grow their brand and cut merchant services costs.| Top Voice on LinkedIn
3 年Good article, Giles. From my experience, a key challenge is to draw together compliance and commercial leadership in a balanced way that reflects fair value. Too often, the balance falls into the commercial space as short term quick wins are extracted due to short term reward structures. This is changing across the banking sector but still slowly.