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FSA/PN/105/2005
4 October 2005

Many financial services firms have made progress over the last year on Treating Customers Fairly (TCF), FSA Managing Director Clive Briault told an industry audience today.

He said he had been encouraged by examples around the country where firms have carried out a gap analysis to identify areas of their business where they are not meeting the objective to treat customers fairly, and have put in place programmes to address any shortcomings. He also mentioned that a number of senior executives had referred to treating customers fairly not as a regulatory obligation that they had somehow to meet but rather as an entirely natural way of describing how they had to improve what they offered to their customers.

He also welcomed the initiatives taken by many trade associations to help their members to understand what treating customers fairly may mean for them and to provide positive examples of what their members can do to raise their standards in this area.

Clive Briault added:

"Treating customers fairly needs to be embedded into the culture of a firm at all levels, so that over time it becomes business as usual. This is very much a responsibility of senior management, not just a compliance issue.

"To help firms with this we have produced a number of statements of good practice (and, indeed, some indications of less good practice) and case studies to illustrate some of the considerations that senior management should take into account. We published many of these in our July paper, and further case studies on management information, remuneration, complaint-handling, and closing a with-profits fund, will be published on our website next week.

"We have now reached the stage of the TCF process where we are building treating customers fairly into Arrow, our core risk assessment and mitigation process. Supervisors will be looking at the approach that a firm has taken to treating its customers fairly, including both the initial "gap analysis" and subsequent actions to address any resulting issues."

Clive Briault concluded:

"The very essence of what we are trying to achieve is - put yourself in the place of your customers and consider very carefully whether you would regard yourself as being treated fairly by your firm."

Notes for editors

1. The full text of Clive Briault speech to the FSA Treating Customers Fairly Conference in London is available on the FSA Website and can be found here.
2. The FSA published a paper Treating Customers Fairly – Building on Progress in July. It is available on the FSA Treating Customers Fairly web pages.
3. The FSA regulates the financial services industry and has four objectives under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000: maintaining market confidence; promoting public understanding of the financial system; securing the appropriate degree of protection for consumers; and fighting financial crime.
4. The FSA aims to promote efficient, orderly and fair markets, help retail consumers achieve a fair deal, and improve its business capability and effectiveness.