Helping you to meet your new Consumer Duty responsibilities

Firms must act to deliver good outcomes for retail customers and put consumers at the heart of their businesses.

We can help you.

The Consumer Duty presents challenges and opportunities for firms. Working in partnership, we can help you to gain insight into your customers and evidence the required outcomes to ensure effective compliance with the new Consumer Duty.

For almost 10 years we have been industry pioneers in putting customers at the heard of decision making. We have a range of solutions to help you evidence that you consider the consumer in all you do.

The FCA will be looking for Board level monitoring of a firm’s performance against the Four Outcomes, including evidence of:

  • Senior management accountability for the Consumer Principle
  • A Governance process that is designed to deliver products and services that are fit for purpose and offer fair value
  • A customer experience framework that enables consumers to make and act on well-informed decisions.
  • Ongoing monitoring and formal annual review to ensure products and services remain relevant.

How we can help you establish & maintain Consumer Duty evidence

Senior Management Accountability

  • KPI survey and sentiment tracker
  • Voice of client roundtables
  • Consumer closeness sessions
  • Profiling & understanding legacy books

Product & Service Governance

  • Product/proposition development & innovation
  • Define target market for new products & demand reads
  • Understand your distribution to fit with target market
  • Test understanding of product communications
  • Feedback on value assessment.

Customer Experience Framework

  • Quality of service – what you offer versus customer expectations
  • Test understanding of key communications across a client journey
  • Understand drivers of value and where to improve

From the Consumer Duty Champion on the board, through risk and governance teams, to insight and marketing colleagues, the implications of Consumer Duty will be felt across your organisation. We have experience in working with both Wealth and Asset Managers, as well as platforms, through the value chain, delivering insight that engages at all levels. 

As you move from implementation plans into evidence, we can help with your prioritisation and scope of what you need to do next. Whether you’re starting with your customer journey, target market or sentiment tracking, we can give you the insight you need. Our webinar outlined the steps you need to take to ensure proportionality and prioritisation are the bedrock of your Consumer Duty implementation plans.

We adopt two key approaches to testing consumer understanding

For longer, complex documents which have a call to action and are critical at the decision making point, we recommend individual, depth interviews:

  • Respondents are sent the communication in advance and asked to read
  • TWC run the project, end to end, including interviews and deliver back a risk-rated report assessing the communications and areas for improvement, leveraging our experience of testing communications for nine years.

For shorter, less complex documents where you are looking for feedback more on clarity, accessibility, look and feel, we recommend testing via our online, ‘pop-up’ community:

  • A sample representative of your target market (end investors) are recruited and profiled accordingly.
  • Participants are shown a range of the communications and add their opinions with activity moderated by a TWC researcher 
  • A series of activities can be combined over a few days to reflect in part the customer journey and build on understanding
  • TWC run the project end to end and deliver back a Task guide and RAG report assessing the communications and areas for improvement, leveraging our experience of testing communications for nine years.

Get started with a simple Consumer Duty test

While the implications of Consumer Duty are far-reaching, we are helping many firms start their implementation plans with some simple testing. If you haven’t worked with us before, or you’re a small firm and don’t know where to start, then get in touch about testing some customer-facing content with us. We can test factsheets, KIDs, marketing materials and more.

Our insight will give you an understanding of how your customers, or proxy customers, understand the risks and characteristics of your products and whether they can make an informed decision about whether they are the appropriate products for them to invest in.

A simple communications test can range from £5,000-£8,000 +VAT.

“We debriefed the findings to our iNEDs and the Board really appreciated our insights. Testing the KID with TWC helped us to understand what good pre- and post-purchase journeys should look like.

We’re looking to implement the changes TWC recommended to improve our customer experience.” – Global Asset Manager

Experienced in putting the consumer at the heart of financial services

We believe in giving everyone the opportunity to a secure financial future, that’s why we strive to make financial products and services fairer and more accessible to all.

Born from the 2008 financial crisis, The Wisdom Council has long demonstrated its commitment to good governance. Only through board responsibility, monitoring, reporting and putting the customer at the heart of the decision-making process, across a value chain, can financial services truly strive for good outcomes for all.

For more information, please use the contact form below, or email our Consumer Duty experts.

Contact us

We draw on deep industry expertise, insight and our independent perspective to develop the tools you need to make savings and investments more accessible to all.

Get in touch to find out how, together, we can deliver financial products and services that your client wants and needs.

The Wisdom Council

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