You may have noticed (I hope you have) that it’s all been a little quiet on the blog front recently.
As many of you know, I do enjoy writing blogs but there have been some other things that have been taking my time.
Two of the most time-consuming matters are linked, at least to an extent.
At the end of July, the FCA introduced a new set of rules, relating to the Consumer Duty. It is fairly shocking that the FCA has had to implement rules to ensure that financial services businesses put their customers first. I’ve always worked on the basis that the easiest way to succeed in business is to put your clients first, and let everything fall into place around that. However, it is evident that many other financial services businesses don’t take the same approach, and it has to be a good thing, therefore, that the FCA has taken some action. As with many of these initiatives, it will take time to change the ways of those who don’t put their customers first, and there will, of course, be many businesses who try to avoid this obligation. We hope that the FCA succeeds. From our point of view, it has meant that we have had to write down and keep records of a lot of the things that we already do, in such a way that our work can be inspected. It’s quite dull and time consuming, but sometimes it can be helpful to write things out. There is a greater emphasis, under the new duty, on how we deal with our vulnerable clients; this extra focus on vulnerability may help us and the financial services industry generally to protect our clients.
At the same time as we have been doing this, there has been a significant worsening in customer service standards from many of the pension, investment and insurance companies we deal with on your behalf. The worst offenders seem to be the older insurance companies, where timescales for almost every task have increased. This has been accompanied by an increase in errors and a reduction in the level of knowledge of the staff we talk to. One of those companies has several different complaints departments and, with another, we felt compelled to write to the Chief Executive to express our frustration. Companies which have recently been acquired by a new owner also seem to have suffered, but we have seen this worsening in service standards spread to some surprising organisations too. It seems likely that the cause of this is the reduction in the size of the available workforce; however, it has meant that some simple tasks have become more time consuming; I am fortunate to have Michelle, Jamie and the rest of the team to back me up. I hope that the FCA’s focus on putting customers first will mean that these companies take steps to improve their customer service, and that this drop in standards is a short-lived blip.
I am committed to giving you updates about retirement planning via the blog, and I expect that you will now start to see weekly updates again.
Philip Wise | philip@sussexretirement.co.uk
Managing Director and Chartered Financial Planner
