How good is your management information

How good is your Management Information? I only ask, as MI is going to be an integral part of the new consumer duty rules.  Good MI can help you understand your firm’s performance, but it will also be required to be submitted to the regulator for interrogation, to demonstrate compliance with the rules.

In the last few weeks, I have seen a few “Help” sheets which I have found to be quite confusing, and rather unhelpful. If you can’t understand the data you are supposed to be collecting, how on earth can you collect it?

There is a lot of news and information floating around saying what the new rules state, but little information in a clear, easily digestible format, stating what you actually have to do on a practical level to achieve compliance.

IFAs I speak to are happy to comply with the rules, some grudgingly, but pretty much all say the same thing: “tell me what to do and I’ll do it”.

The new rules are not just a tick box exercise, far from it, the rules place a responsibility on firms to achieve good customer outcomes, and not just to demonstrate that a certain process has been followed. At the heart of all of this is putting customers’ needs first and ensuring that their needs remain paramount on an ongoing basis.

I’m a great advocate for trying to make IFAs lives easier, and with these new rules, and from an MI perspective, that starts with defining what actually needs to be measured. This is where key changes start to emerge. The new rules will require a gap analysis to be carried out to ascertain what is currently available and what is not available but now needs to be measured.

We’ve developed an easy-to-follow template which can help you achieve compliance. This template is available for a fixed price fee.

We have also some suggestions for helping you obtain information from your clients, which can be run in conjunction with any existing system you use.

We can also help you with methods to stay on top of customer communications. The ability to monitor communications to ensure that the right information is being provided in a compliant manner, and updated as and when required, will be essential.

Also important will be collating feedback from customers to make sure that not only have they received information, but they have understood it as well.

If you would like to know more about how we can help your business with the consumer duty rules, please do get in touch. Our Consultancy department will be pleased to help you