A guide to mystery shopping in retail financial services
This short guide explains how and why we – the Financial Services Authority (the FSA) - conduct mystery shopping and use the findings.
It explains how mystery shopping works and shows how firms are selected. Some of the most popular myths are set straight and there are answers to questions firms have raised.
The guide includes the following topics:
- What is mystery shopping and why does the FSA use it?
- How are firms selected?
- What do we do with the findings?
- Can the results be used in any referral to enforcement?
- How does mystery shopping work?
- How big are mystery shopping samples?
- Do we record the shop?
- How do we analyse and report on the results?
Why we do mystery shopping
Mystery shopping is widely used in the financial services sector and is sometimes used by firms to carry out research on their competitors. For the FSA it can be a useful way of bridging the gap between supervisory reports and information we receive from consumers.
The FSA uses mystery shopping sparingly as it is most useful when we need to look at business or selling practices in context. It is never used as a "fishing" exercise, but only when there is reason to believe that there will be important and useful findings.
Findings from Mystery Shopping
Where we have done a mystery shopping exercise we will feed back the findings to the relevant industry including examples of good and poor practice.
If we have serious concerns following a mystery shopping exercise and we think that follow up work is necessary we will tell you that your firm has been involved in a mystery shopping exercise. Where the findings are not significant enough for us to take further action we will not normally notify your firm.