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Treating Customers Fairly

It is now clear that many major financial services groups failed to meet the FSA’s March 2008 TCF MI deadline. This demonstrates that TCF for large, complex organisations is proving much harder than expected to interpret, implement and embed. Firms are having to rapidly rethink their approach to TCF and what ‘successfully embedded TCF’ will actually look like, if they are to meet the FSA’s next significant deadline in December 2008.

While the FSA’s July 2007 TCF Culture paper set out the cultural assessment framework which supervisors should use in December 2008, it left firms the tough task of understanding how they should actually demonstrate that they are consistently treating their customers fairly.

Huntswood’s industry leading best practice approach to resolving this complex problem, has enabled a number of our clients to not only meet the March 2008 deadline, but also position themselves well to meet the December 2008 deadline. The Huntswood approach uses a clear definition of fairness in order to identify opportunities for TCF led continuous improvement in the product distribution, sales and service lifecycles.

Our market leading approach also ensures that:

Continuous improvement against outcomes is demonstrable to the regulator
Any activity is clearly planned, cost effective and pragmatic
There is buy-in at all levels across the business, ensuring the solution is embraced and sustainable.

Huntswood’s tried and tested approach to successfully embedding TCF has helped clients in the retail banking, life and pensions and general insurance sectors. We offer rapid reviews around all aspects of TCF to enable firms to quickly define the issues affecting successful embedding, and our approach enables firms to make up lost time and get on the right trajectory for meeting the December 2008 deadline.

When asked to describe our contribution to the successful delivery of a TCF project one our clients stated that:

“We wouldn’t have successfully passed our TCF MI review or be well positioned to embed TCF in 2008 without the Huntswood team”. TCF Champion and Marketing Director, leading UK life and pensions provider.

To order your copy of the Huntswood report ‘Treating Customers Fairly, Embracing regulatory change for business benefit’ please click here.