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        • Performance Account 2005/06
          • Service standards - April 06
            • Authorisations
            • Regulatory Decisions
            • Complaints against the FSA
            • Listing
            • Notifications
            • Communications
            • Customer satisfaction

This edition covers our performance for the period 1 October 2005 to 31 March 2006.

Introduction

This is the fourth edition of our performance account. This account provides you with information about the areas of our service that we measure, how we are performing against these measures and our monitoring of customer satisfaction. Our standards apply to a range of our services, including how we deal with telephone enquiries, correspondence and applications.

As we continue to improve our business and the way we deal with our customers we are committed to the delivery of high quality service to our customers. Over the past six months we have completed almost three-quarters of a million transactions and have continued to see a steady improvement in all the areas of our service that we measure.

We will introduce further standards where they will help us meet your needs. It is vital to the interests of our stakeholders that we make the right regulatory decision and on occasion this will mean that some transactions take longer than others. Given a choice between meeting a standard and taking more time to make the right decision for you, we will take more time.

On the 1 April 2006 we introduced:

• three new service standards CM1.1, CM1.2, CM10.1
• improvements to our processes for 2 standards; and
• new customer satisfaction measures.

Our Performance

This edition includes our performance against 2 service standards which came into force on 1 October 2005 . These relate to:

• requests for the re-use of public sector information; and
• complete applications for a Variation of Permissions.

74 service standards were in place for the period 1 October 2005 to 31 March 2006 . In that period we received no requests from customers in relation to 8 of these, and for the remaining standards we:

• met 52 - (78.8%) ; and
• achieved better than 90% of the target level for 14 - (21.2%).

Where we did not meet a standard we explain later in the account what performance we did achieve, why we did not meet the standard and what we are doing to improve our future performance.

The graph below shows our overall performance against our standards for the last two years. Our performance for the latest reporting period, 1 October 2005 to 31 March 2006 , compares favourably with previous results.

We have seen a significant improvement in our performance and have seen the number of standards which were "not met" reduce from 3 to nil.

Of the fourteen performance standards where we did not meet the target, thirteen have very challenging "100% standards". Against ten of these our actual performance was over 98%.

There is still room for improvement, but our results show that, as a result of tightening our controls and continuing to listen to your feedback, we are improving our standard of service and making ourselves easier to do business with.

Our new standards

With effect from 1 April 2006 , we have introduced a further 3 new standards. The first performance figures for these standards will be given in the next update to this account in October 2006. The new standards relate to:

• replying to correspondence received from firms; (CM1.1)
• notifying firms of our findings following an "ARROW" discovery visit to a firm; (CM1.2) and
• timely payment of invoices. (CM10.1)

Tightening our standards

We are constantly seeking to improve our performance, and have tightened two of our existing service standards with effect from 1 April 2006 :

• Standard for answering telephone calls made to our Firm Contact Centre within 20 seconds. – Target increased from 75% to 80%
• Standard for answering telephone calls made to our Consumer Contact Centre within 20 seconds. – Target increased from 75% to 80%

We will continue to review our service standards regularly based on your feedback to ensure we deliver high quality service to our customers.

 Measuring customer satisfaction

In April 2005 we launched targets for the 'satisfaction' of our customers who have used some of our core services. GfK-NOP Research Group, an independent research company, conducts telephone surveys on our behalf, the results of which are anonymised. NOP survey the opinion of firms that have completed a transaction in one of eight core regulatory services:

• Corporate Authorisation applications;
• Waiver applications;
• Variation of Permission applications;
• Change of Controller applications;
• Cancellation applications;
• Collective Investment Scheme applications;
• Outward Passporting applications; and
• Individual Approval applications.

The graph below shows the latest results against these eight processes. Further details on the targets, results, and methodology can be found in the customer satisfaction section.

Other changes

• Consumer Contact Centre correspondence standard – Target changed to match the new firm correspondence standard.
• Code of Market conduct query standard – Wording changed to widen the scope of the standard.
• Our Contact Centres have each removed 2 standards from the performance account. One relates to the acknowledgment of correspondence and the other to the resolution of queries on first contact. This follows an internal review which recommended that different measurements be developed to further improve our customer focus.

Next edition

The performance account will be published every 6 months, in April and October. Our next edition will be available in late October 2006.

How to contact us

If you have an enquiry about our performance or the services we measure please e-mail us at performance.account@fsa.gov.uk .

View a complete list of our Service Standards.

Recent performance tables

Authorisations (Standards relating to our speed of processing applications for authorisation from firms)

Regulatory decisions (Standards related to the speed with which we make regulatory decisions at firms' requests)

Complaints against the FSA (Standards relating to the speed with which we deal with complaints made against us)

Listing (Standards agreed with HM Treasury regarding the speed with which we process requests relating to the UKLA)

Notifications (Standards reflecting our speed in making routine changes to the information we hold)

Communications (Standards reflecting our speed in responding to communications)

Performance key
Not Met Under 90% Compliance	Nearly Met Over 90% Compliance	Met 100% Compliance	No Applications No Requests Received