The Financial Conduct Authority left it rather late on Friday afternoon to announce another review. As Money Marketing reports, it has announced plans to review what firms are doing to understand and respond to the needs of customers in vulnerable circumstances. This is not, as with previous plans, only based on age.
The review will look at firms’ understanding of consumer needs, the skills and capability of staff, product and service design, communications and customer service, and whether these support the fair treatment of vulnerable customers.
This appears to be a key passage in that it “will enable us to understand whether those consumers most susceptible to harm are receiving good outcomes”.
There will be research with consumers and firms with findings published at the end of the year. This isn’t a regulatory review that sounds as if it ends with enforcement action or at the very least not yet.
More regulatory news. The FCA is an “outcomes-focused” regulator and its push for consumer fair value under Consumer Duty is not a “Trojan horse” for price regulation, the CEO Nikhil Rathi has told a Morgan Stanley conference, as Professional Adviser reports.
The challenge to such assertions is surely that vertically integrated advice businesses including the most high profile, SJP, may feel that the outcome is them having to lower charges. When indeed is a charge not a price? There is certainly some scepticism about this across social media.
This is interesting given what appears to be a legacy of mental health challenges post pandemic across not just financial services but, of course, society.
FTAdviser examines the matter at length “hybrid working and virtual contact with clients can leave advisers sometimes feeling isolated, so it is important for workplaces to make sure social prescribing approaches have been put in place”.
Dr Julie Denning, chartered health psychologist and managing director of Working To Wellbeing, and Kay Needle, Generali UK’s early intervention and rehabilitation expert, talked about the positive role that employers and social prescribing can play to help people return to work and thrive in their occupation.
They also discuss the strong connection between physical and mental health. I find this to be a very interesting component of business these days though there is something of a backlash in some quarters too.
Never personally sure if borrowing medical terms such as prescribing is always appropriate.
Inflation predictions by central banks and economists are pointless and should not inform portfolio asset allocation decisions, according to John Roe, head of multi-asset funds at LGIM, and reported by New Model Adviser. Prepare not predict, he suggests.
I have always found it a little bizarre that the Bank of England in its quarterly inflation reports illustrates what would happen to inflation if market expectations for the Bank’s future interest rate decisions prove to be correct.
There has been criticism of this slightly tortuous approach. Prepare not predict, indeed.
