Harold Stephens Joins Consumer Duty Alliance
We’re proud to announce we have joined the Consumer Duty Alliance (CDA) as an Associate. The CDA now incorporates the Financial Vulnerability Taskforce which we previously committed to adhering to and championing.
Launched on 9th March 2023, CDA is an independent, not-for-profit professional body which aims to support the personal finance sector specifically with the adoption and implementation of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) Consumer Duty requirements.
Any firm or individual can join CDA for free and members commit to delivering better client outcomes. You can access the consumer guide to CDA here.
What Is The Consumer Duty?
Coming in to force in July 2023, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) are introducing a new set of rules known as the "Consumer Duty" to strengthen the protection of financial consumers. The Consumer Duty is designed to enhance transparency and accountability within the financial services industry and ensure that firms act in the best interests of their clients.
Essentially, Consumer Duty is broken down to 3 cross-cutting obligations;
A firm must act in good faith towards retail customers.
A firm must avoid causing foreseeable harm to retail customers.
A firm must enable and support retail customers to pursue their financial objectives.
A ‘retail customer’ is an individual that is purchasing financial products or services for their own personal use. This includes products such as insurance, investments, pensions, and mortgages.
This is undoubtedly a positive step forward for financial consumers. It sets a higher standard of care for financial firms, ensuring that they are held accountable for their actions and that they act in the best interests of their clients.
At Harold Stephens we have worked hard to ensure the needs of our clients are always put to the forefront of everything do, so this is not something new to us. However, it provides us with confidence in the Regulator that they are focusing more on consumers and providing them with greater protection and confidence when accessing financial products and services.
In terms of what we have being doing in response to the above impending rules, internally we have produced a detailed implementation plan which allows us to monitor and document our progress.
We carried out a full gap analysis, which drew across the key considerations that are relevant to our firm, and which has helped us identify any actions that needed to be taken in order to comply with the Consumer Duty. Many of the resulting actions of the gap analysis have already been implemented across the firm, ahead of schedule.
If you would like to know more about the Consumer Duty Alliance or the requirements of the FCA'‘s Consumer Duty, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.