Some Thoughts on the FCA Consumer Duty Rules

New Consumer Duty rules are on the way from the FCA. Manoj Pant, senior director and EMEA Insurance industry principal at Pegasystems offers some comments on how insurers will respond to enacting significant improvements to their processes within a tight timetable set by the FCA:

“These changes from the FCA sound daunting for insurers and other financial service providers but there are technology solutions that, coupled with the right people and process design, can make it possible to deliver against these targets and beyond them.

Clearly, to transform customer service processes to hit deadlines next year and in 2024, there will be a demand on technology to play a pivotal role. This will put huge pressure on insurers’ existing process improvement resources to design and deliver new processes that comply with what the FCA demands.

In fact, how the FCA’s new Consumer Duty requires an epic rewiring of processes should be the catalyst for expanding the sector’s use of more modern process improvement technologies and techniques.

Low code software means providers can easily prototype and quickly get to a working solution for Consumer Duty compliance. To effectively react to the tougher regulatory and customer driven expectations, how low code lowers the barrier for non-tech participation means getting both customer service operations and technology staff together to redesign a process more effectively has never been easier. This could help providers meet both deadlines and even bring more complex products into line with the Consumer Duty requirements sooner than July 2024.

In pressing ahead with Consumer Duty, the FCA does need to recognise how insurers have remodelled their operations in the last two years.  There is going to be an element of needing to cope with dispersed hybrid working teams. Technology can support here with tools to monitor productivity and process efficiency. This can spot where systems latency may be holding teams back, or over / under use of different systems to get to the right customer outcome. However, to truly get the most out of this, teams should be brought together to understand performance, ideate, and collaborate on improvements. This again is aided by how insurers adopt low code software development tools.”