Complaints and Customer Vulnerability - Best Practice Approaches (Public Course)

Complaints and Customer Vulnerability - Best Practice Approaches (Public Course)

With the Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA’s) final vulnerable customer guidance now firmly in place and the Consumer Duty now nipping at our heels, the FCA’s expectations on us to do the right thing for our customers has never been as high as it is today.

Up until now as an industry we’ve tended to focus our efforts on understanding customer vulnerability through the lens of collections and recoveries teams. But customer vulnerability has changed and is changing.

Over the last few years, vulnerability has evolved to be something much bigger and more inclusive than it once was. It isn’t just about being in debt anymore, vulnerability can happen to any of us at any time and when things go wrong, the impact can be significant.

It isn’t just about reaching the right decision on a complaint anymore. The FCA expects complaints handlers to have the necessary skills to recognise and respond to vulnerable customers in the same way that it expects firms to have an accessible complaints journey. And it doesn’t stop there. Firms will be expected to demonstrate that customers in vulnerable situations are receiving at least as good an outcome as customers who complain who are not in a vulnerable situation.

This practical and course will take you through the FCA’s expectations and what your firm can do to help you to meet those expectations – from the way customers raise their complaints and the skills complaints handlers will need, to reaching good customer outcomes that reduce the chances of cases ending up at FOS.