FCA speaks on vulnerable customers

Nisha Arora has spoken on FCA’s approach to ensuring firms treat vulnerable customers fairly. She stressed the need to move away from a tick-box approach to having policies to deal with vulnerability to showing how firms embed the need to treat vulnerable customers fairly in their culture, processes and practices.  She said it is clear that progress has been made, but more needs to be done to get consistent outcomes across the sector. She moved on to discuss FCA’s draft guidance, published in July and on which consultation closed in October. The guidance focuses on:

• understanding vulnerability;
• skills and capability of staff;
• practical actions – product and service design, customer service and communications; and
• monitoring and evaluation.

FCA plans to consult on revised guidance in the spring.