More than ever, companies must seek to protect their brand and reputation and seek ways to prosper from their customer relationships.  Embedding TCF within your organisation can support both these objectives.

Protect

The Financial Services market is under increasing scrutiny and regulatory pressure and competition is intensifying.  Scrutiny also comes from consumer bodies, voluntary codes and the media.

Prosper

Trying to maintain and increase customer numbers and to drive more customer value is a major challenge.  Insights from TCF analysis can support a company’s approach to meeting this challenge whether customers are targeted directly or through intermediaries.

The journey to embedding Treating Customers Fairly

Deloitte’s experienced team has worked with many of the leading financial institutions at different stages of development from a customer insight, strategy, organisational change and regulatory perspectives.

Our flexible, independent and objective approach can support you to:

• Set out a strategy and tailor TCF to facilitate embedding
• Customise an approach to embedding TCF that considers the FSA, customer and firm perspectives and highlights the need for co-operation between control functions
• Carry out a gap analysis, action planning, prioritisation and implementation
• Develop or validate robust governance and control including MI for monitoring ongoing TCF delivery and customer and firm outcomes
• Implement changes arising from gap analysis and action planning
• Identify and capitalise on opportunities to improve the way that you interact with your customers

Evidence for embedding Treating Customers Fairly

Following the FSA’s Treating Customers Fairly paper (PDF) published in July 2006, firms should be able to deliver six outcomes that mean for consumers:

• They deal with firms where TCF is part of the corporate culture
• Products are designed to meet their needs
• They are kept appropriately informed
• They receive suitable advice
• Product performance is as they were let to expect
• There are no unreasonable post-sale barriers    

How can a firm successfully evidence these outcomes?

Delivery can be monitored at three levels to ensure that Treating Customers Fairly is embedded and to allow validation of approach and improvements to be made.

• TCF practice - checking that governance, systems and controls are in place and are being followed.
• Customer outcomes - assessing whether customers’ outcomes indicate that they are being treated fairly.
• Business outcomes - checking that TCF change is also aligned with the business strategy.