Posts in category: Blog

And one that has inspired us to continually consider and review the support, policies and social committees we deliver and champion with our team members. And at various points in all our lives we’ll be approaching issues from different viewpoints – so we’re keen to acknowledge and support this as a business through our internal policies. 

For example:

• Our menopause policy aims to break the taboo in the workplace – we want everyone to be able to talk about it openly and without embarrassment and explain to those who don’t know, how this transition in a woman’s life is often not always an easy one.  The changing age of the UK’s workforce means that between 75% and 80% of menopausal women are in work. And research shows that the majority of women are unwilling to discuss menopausal related health problems with their line manager, nor ask for the support or adjustments that they may need. Through our policy we want our team members to feel supported to improve their time at work and know that as a business we understand the challenges they’re facing and will help them through this time. 
• We’re also committed to supporting working parents and knowing that flexibility is key to creating a successful work-life balance. Our team members have the choice of working from home, the office or hybrid as well as flexibility around school drop off and pick up times. 

And striving to advance towards a truly diverse workforce is championed by our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee in collaboration with our Senior Leadership and HR team.

With the upcoming implementation deadline, firms are realising that embedding the Consumer Duty and monitoring its outcomes is no mean feat, and that resource investment alone isn’t going to provide the level of oversight required to monitor and evidence good consumer outcomes consistently. In its multi-firm review, the FCA did note some effective ways firms can go about this: 

By now, many firms will have working groups set up to tackle the changes in policy and processes needed to realign with the Duty’s more stringent oversight standards. And so, it’s more important than ever that everyone – across the entire business – understands why these changes are taking place, and how this will require a long-term behavioural shift, not just compliance with new processes.

The impact of these changes will be felt from the board level to senior management, with the latter likely to oversee its rollout and application in real terms. We also know that a cornerstone of the Duty is to provide support for vulnerable customers, so those colleagues in customer facing roles will need to be trained to spot and identify those characteristics and provide suitable help.

Having a robust process in place to identify which of your consumers show signs of vulnerability – bearing in mind that this can happen to anyone at any time throughout their customer journey – has never been more important. 

But how can firms effectively demonstrate this and evidence fair treatment of vulnerable customers? Well, the good news is the FCA has already cited one solution in a recent speech: by embracing the use of AI.

Quality Assurance teams can implement RegTech to great effect when addressing the challenges of vulnerability.

Ensuring good, consistent consumer outcomes will be more important than ever under the FCA’s new Consumer Duty. And that’s where Recordsure’s ConversationReviewAI can revolutionise how QA teams achieve call quality assurance whilst gaining full oversight of customer interactions.

The ConversationReviewAI model leverages machine learning and thousands of hours of manual training by our in-house linguistic analysts. The analysts meticulously examine customer calls and teach the Recordsure AI model to understand the context around the language used in conversations. 

And Recordsure’s unique ‘neural network’ solution goes beyond speech analytics that rely on identifying key words and phrases. Such models often only achieve a true positive for every five false positives. Recordsure’s solution goes way beyond this, with accuracy around the 90% mark.

By having holistic oversight of customer data, spotting, and supporting customers when they’re in need becomes a more manageable and evidencable feat for QA teams. Firms that embrace this tac will be able to demonstrate how the Duty’s ethos is at the heart of its customer and business life cycle, as they quickly, succinctly, and concisely analyse customer interactions.