The Financial Services Consumer Panel (FSCP) has called on the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to provide a simple rating system to help consumers decide which firms would treat them well.
Research commissioned by the FSCP found that consumers were enthusiastic about getting information about firms’ behaviour and quality of service to help them make decisions.
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The respondents said the information should be authoritative, impartial, easy to understand, and incorporated into existing decision-making tools, like comparison tables.
The Panel said it believed that would be possible to develop a ‘star’ system or something similar based on available data, such as regulatory history (for example fines and penalties), service level data held by firms and surveys of customers’ views about service levels.
It said such a system would also help consumers work out at a glance which firms were likely to treat them well post-sale, and could amplify the effect of penalties on poor service levels.
Sue Lewis, chair of the FSCP said: "When people buy a financial product or service, they have no idea how well the firm they are buying from will treat them after the sale. Sadly, their expectations are not high, and they assume that all providers are as bad as each other.
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By GlobalData"There is a wealth of information available on the way firms treat their customers, but it is hard to get at or to interpret, so people can’t use it for making decisions about which firms they want to do business with.
"We think the FCA should lead the way in combining the different aspects of firm behaviour together in a single measure. At the very least, we believe the regulator should require firms to publish more data about service level and firm conduct, and consider how these can be made most accessible to consumers."
