Active duty: Remember it's consumer not customer support

Taking an in depth look at the consumer support pillar in context

clock • 4 min read

In the last article of this four-part series, Lee Halpin talks through the consumer support pillar of Consumer Duty and highlights its key areas for advisers – appropriate friction, foreseeable harms and vulnerable clients…

The regulator tells firms to ask themselves a question, which is a thoughtful one: are you applying the same consumer support standards to deliver good consumer outcomes as you do to help generate sales and revenue? This emphasises consumer support is not just a tick-box exercise, but something that needs to be embedded in the business's culture - and even structure. For example, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) says consumer harm can arise from under-resourced helplines that "disproportionately focus on pre-sales over after-sales support." More generally, the FCA is clear that f...

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