PIMFA Learning: Vulnerable Customers: Applying and Implementing PIMFA’s guidance in your firm

Customer vulnerability is a complex area that PIMFA member firms must get right. Ultimately, it is about identifying customers with vulnerable characteristics and ensuring they consistently experience good outcomes. That’s not as easy as it sounds, especially when The FCA has made clear that it will apply a vulnerability lens to its ongoing supervisory and enforcement work.

This live tutor-led training course delivered by vulnerability experts at the Money Advice Trust, based on PIMFA’s recently published 160-page guide, “Understanding Customer Vulnerability”, supports wealth managers and financial advisors who want to improve how they can:

• Embed a focus on vulnerability into their strategy and culture.
• Ensure they are asking the right questions about the data, management information, and data they need to deliver the right outcomes and experiences for vulnerable customers.
• Account for customer vulnerability in product and service design.
• Actively monitor customer behaviour and consider potential vulnerability in customer interactions.
• Support and enable customers with characteristics of vulnerability to disclose their needs.
• Capturing and retrieving information about vulnerability during subsequent customer interactions

By enrolling on this course, you’ll be able to answer with confidence the following questions:

• How do you identify customers who may be vulnerable, and what criteria do you use for this assessment?
• What specific support mechanisms are in place to assist vulnerable customers throughout their interaction with your firm?
• How do you tailor and test communication strategies to ensure that vulnerable customers understand the products and services offered?
• Are your services and communications accessible to all customers, including those with disabilities or other barriers?
• How do you monitor the effectiveness of your support for vulnerable customers, and what metrics do you use?
• What procedures do you have in place for escalating the needs of vulnerable customers to senior management or specialised teams?
• How do you ensure that products and services offered to vulnerable customers appropriately meet their needs?

Who Should Attend:

• SMF holders who require the knowledge and understanding to promote a culture of awareness and responsiveness to vulnerable clients in line with current and future FCA expectations.
• Sales & Marketing Directors tasked with ensuring that the firm’s financial promotions and customer communications don’t exploit vulnerable consumers.
• Compliance and Risk leaders that want a proven framework to better recognise, assess, and manage potential risks related to vulnerable customers.
• Regulatory risk professionals and in-house counsel who, having identified evidence of consumer harm or risk of harm to vulnerable customers, need to develop a remediation strategy to avoid assertive supervisory and enforcement action.
•  Internal auditors who wanting to ‘up their firm’s game’ seek to ensure effective monitoring and reporting mechanisms are in place to track how the firm identifies and serves vulnerable customers, evaluating both the processes and the outcomes.