Help for
Life Assurers
The Challenges
- Responding to the regulator's challenge to the industry to ensure that it "treats customers fairly"
- Handling huge numbers of sales complaints about investments, pensions, savings and protection products and increasing pressure from regulators, politicians, claims management companies and consumer groups to uphold complaints quickly and pay the correct compensation. Against that, coping with nervous management's worries that you may be threatening the solvency or profitability of the organization in the process.
- Business reviews of income drawdown, structured products, endowments, protection and individual advisers. Similar pressures to keep costs down while satisfying the regulators.
- Increasing regulatory concern about the general quality of complaints procedures and the feedback obtained from them. Ensuring that complaints reporting and root cause analysis are is done accurately throughout often huge organizations. Retaining customers who are unhappy with administration standards by improving the standards of complaint handling done in this area procedures.
- Making direct sales forces and appointed representatives develop compliant sustainable client relationships while maintaining profits. Avoiding future complaints from sales.
- Developing innovative products without creating future compliance problems in the process.
- Bringing advertising into line with the approach being taken by the FCA.
- Building a positive relationship with the Financial Conduct Authority and dealing with the threat of disciplinary action.
Solutions
- Advising on and auditing the company's processes and outputs to see whether they "treat customers fairly" and how this can benefit the organisation more.
- Training on endowments, sales generally, admin complaint and FCA complaint rules.
- Business review training courses.
- Reviewing sales and complaint files.
- Auditing complaints procedures.
- Advice in a wide variety of forms on complaint handling, compliance and legal issues. Instant e-mail or telephone advice, written notes, detailed opinions, face-to-face consultations and business reviews.
- Compliance reviews of advisers' files.
- Training courses on financial promotions, compliance checking, fact-finding and drafting suitability reports.
- Writing compliance profiles of products to help that they are marketed correctly and to help the press understand this. Reviewing products and policy wordings to ensure clarity.
- Reviewing advertising.
- Dealing with the FCA over issues facing the firm and persuading the regulator not to take formal disciplinary action against the company.
- Read Consumer Complaints and Compensation.