MorganAsh and Moneyhub join forces to address vulnerability and Consumer Duty

MorganAsh, the leading support services provider, and Moneyhub, the market leading Open Finance, Open Data, and payments platform, are working together to strengthen the ability of firms to understand, monitor and deliver good outcomes for vulnerable customers, in-line with the requirements of Consumer Duty. 

The partnership will see MorganAsh using Moneyhub’s advanced Open Banking and Open Finance  platform to access customers' financial data with their explicit consent to assist with the real-time assessment and monitoring of consumer vulnerability. It will be included within MARS, the MorganAsh Resilience System and will help determine a customer’s ‘Resilience Rating’ – much like a credit score. 

MorganAsh launched its MARS broker tool in March to enable firms to assess and monitor consumer vulnerability and stay compliant with the FCA’s upcoming Consumer Duty regulation.

Gained through customer's explicit consent, the newly accessible data will help highlight changes in behaviour and specific lifestyle indicators such as gambling or changes in employment, which can all be triggers for intervention by financial services firms. Real-time monitoring of income, expenditure, assets, and liabilities can alert firms to changes in circumstances and identify vulnerable characteristics. 

Andrew Gething, managing director of MorganAsh said: “Consumer Duty adds the onerous task to monitor customers through the product lifecycle to ensure the product is still suitable.  While our MARS tool can capture any direct contact from consumers and we can email consumers for annual updates, the potential to receive real-time data from Moneyhub will enable real-time monitoring so we can proactively contact consumers when their circumstances and needs change.  This delivers real competitive advantages to our customers.”    

“We are delighted to be working with Moneyhub as they share our same vision and complement our aims for the MARS tool.” 

Vaughan Jenkins, Business Development Director of Moneyhub added: “Consumer Duty and Open Finance herald a new era of customer-focused firms and financial resilience. Smart, forward-looking businesses will seize this moment and benefit from it. By truly understanding consumers and their ongoing needs, efficiency, productivity, and compliance will become positive side effects. We are immensely proud to be working together with MorganAsh and shine a light on the hidden value our technologies can unlock and ensure no harm is caused to any customers, especially the most vulnerable.”

The FCA finalised requirements on Consumer Duty in July 2022 with implementation for open products by July 2023.  It requires financial services firms to act in good faith, avoid causing foreseeable harm and enable and support customers to pursue their financial objectives.

This means firms need to urgently reappraise how they identify, assess and monitor the vulnerability of consumers throughout the product and relationship lifecycle.

As 50 per-cent of consumers are potentially vulnerable, and consumers can become vulnerable at any time, there is a challenge for financial firms to understand the needs, characteristics and behaviours of vulnerable customers.  While some companies are using individual assessments, the reporting from this approach is inconsistent and does not provide consistent data to meet Consumer Duty requirements.  There is the need to have solid, consistent, timely and regular data.