DEDICATED SUPPORT

Practice management systems are designed to take the hard work out of running your business , and they can help do the same for your Consumer Duty compliance .

The Consumer Duty places a lot of emphasis on better client communication and providing evidence that its requirements are being met . The more manual systems , or different computer systems , you are using , the harder both of these are going to be . So let ’ s look at some of the ways in which a powerful practice management system can help you with the requirements of the Consumer Duty .

USING YOUR CLIENT PORTAL TO MONITOR CLIENT NEED

Part of the Consumer Support outcome of the Consumer Duty states that firms should meet the needs of clients throughout the relationship . This raises the question : how do you know when the clients ’ needs have changed ?

One answer may be that you will need to interact more frequently with all your clients and generate evidence for the FCA that you have assessed and understood the clients ’ needs .

Many firms use client portals for their more engaged , often higher net worth , clients who like to be actively engaged with their investments .

However , this can exclude some of the benefits of opening up the client portal to all clients .

For example , the personal finance portal ( PFP ) in Intelliflo Office can be configured to only show the widgets relevant to a particular client segment . This means you could enable all your clients to actively update their own fact find , add new income streams or connect their bank accounts via open banking , whilst retaining features like live valuations for premium clients .

Not only does this give you a more engaging and feature-rich offering for all clients , it ’ s also easier for clients to self-service when their needs change , or when prompted by you . Visits to your portal are also logged , giving you strong evidence as to client ’ s level of engagement and interaction .

USING SECURE MESSAGING TO ASSESS VULNERABILITY

Section 11.34 of the Consumer Duty Act states : “ When considering which information to collect , firms should also consider how that information will enable them to assess whether certain groups of consumers , such as those with characteristics

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