How Hatch can help with consumer duty

Every business wants to believe they are doing the right thing for their clients, but very few can actually prove it.

However, the introduction of Consumer Duty changes that, requiring businesses in the financial services sector to demonstrate they are meeting minimum customer service standards.

Plan, tweak, test, repeat

Whatever your view of Consumer Duty, it brings in an unquestionable need to evidence how your proposition performs right from the initial enquiry to annual reviews.

This is where we can help, by capturing data which you can use to test the success of the service you have designed and make improvements where required.

We think it’s easy to generate good outcomes not only for your clients, but also for your business, using Consumer Duty to track if the service that you sell matches up with what’s really happening.

Does your marketing match reality?

You may have a clear idea of your target audience, using client personas to help you pitch your marketing messages correctly.

You will also have an idea of the service level and association fee they will need. 

If you have different service levels for different client personas, you should check whether they are slotting into the service levels you expect. 

If not, you may need to tweak the marketing message, provide some additional support to the people signing up clients or redesign elements of the service level.

Can you give more advice more efficiently?

We’ve seen lots of firms use our technology to send seasonal or timely messages to clients using data to personalise them and make them more interesting and thoughtful. 

It’s also possible to extend this principle into financial advice.

For example, many firms complain that insurance is rarely recommended by their advisers, but do very little to look at if there is a cohort of clients they can target for an offering.

Ignoring the issue increases the risk of complaints, as well as losing potential revenue.

Making data easy to interrogate and communications targeted and easy to produce is core to our technology. You should be able to generate more revenue from existing clients, not just new ones.

How much data do you capture, but never use?

Our intelligent client search and communication capability makes running campaigns simple, and the built-in artificial intelligence technology is now taking this a step further.

So instead of, for example, asking a data analyst to build a query or bring back lists of clients, you can simply ask the system to do it for you, and then ask it to draft an email so you can contact the people you want to reach.

In other words, artificial intelligence is enabling you to take the data you have and put it to good use, without the need for specialist help.

Smarter compliance, not more compliance

Equally, you will have services and products you would expect only some clients to have. 

Using data intelligently in this area can really make compliance work more efficiently and effectively, looking for outliers rather than simply checking files by percentage.

For example: 

• If you knew a 40-year-old client had been given inheritance tax planning advice, or that an 80-year-old client had no will, you might want to look into these cases in a bit more detail. 

• If a higher rate tax payer was using an ISA allowance rather than contributing to their pension, there might be a good reason for that. But it’s still best to check that file rather than just because an ISA has been recommended.

Better business

These might appear like initiatives designed to improve your business, rather than compliance with the Consumer Duty, but really they serve both purposes. 

Using data-driven evidence to test and refine your proposition gives both you and your clients great outcomes, and should satisfy the regulator.

Want to find out more about how Hatch can help your business?

Book a demo today and lets talk.