TCF failings still evident, warns Protocall One

A study from Protocall One has suggested that the culture of 'Treating Customers Fairly' (TCF) compliance is not yet embedded in life and pensions providers' systems.

The study took in TCF, Management Information (MI), and analytics systems, and concluded that some firms may still be failing to pass all six TCF Outcomes to the satisfaction of the Financial Services Authority.

TCF Outcome One, which demands that firms need to be in a position where 'consumers can be confident that they are dealing with firms where the fair treatment of customers is central to the corporate culture', is of core concern for Protocall One.

To ensure compliance with this outcome firms need to be capturing a mixture of HR, finance and operations metrics, which are collectively linked to embedding TCF into the culture of the organisation.

For example, it is important to measure how TCF strategy is being communicated from director-level down through the organisation to the contact centre, via staff awareness surveys, for example.

Faraz Khan, managing director at Protocall One, said: 'Although most companies now have these metrics in place there is often no swift, dynamic or effective means of cross-analysing increasing volumes of data in order to firstly identify issues and negative trends and then to proactively fix them.

'Yet this is what the FSA is now demanding of financial services providers.

'They tend to be reliant on MI, which may deliver the right metrics but does not help interpret them.

'Without this analysis, operations directors are finding it difficult to make the right decisions to ensure TCF is being properly embedded in the organisation.

Phil Jones, managing director at TCF specialist consultancy Excitant, added: 'The FSA expects you to demonstrate a culture of treating customers fairly and show that you have appropriate governance in place, evidenced by MI.

'You need to clearly demonstrate that you can identify fairness issues systematically across the organisation.

'You also need to show that, where you find problem, you take prompt and appropriate actions to address them.

'Finally your MI should provide evidence that your actions are improving the situation.

'To do this you need explicit information on the TCF culture, skills, training, awareness and behaviours as well as activities and customer interactions and reactions.

'Unfortunately most reporting systems either omit the culture, skills, behaviours and customer reactions, or treat them as isolated pieces and don't take the systemic view.

Protocall One recently launched its Oneview business intelligence application that takes data from multiple sources, locations and systems to deliver intelligent MI in a visual dashboard format that heads of customer services and compliance can act on; in a timeframe that enables the business to be managed in a more dynamic way as new requirements emerge.

It could be deployed for TCF governance monitoring and analysis.

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