2024 – a huge year for MorganAsh
Is it that time already?
It feels like we’ve only just taken down last year’s Christmas decorations and here we are, putting them right back up again. As 2024 draws to a close, we look at some highlights from the year. Our top line:
Consumer Duty, and managing vulnerable customers, is a massive challenge for many firms. We’ve made a lot of headway in helping firms meet the regulations.
Our benchmarking shows that MARS customers identify a broadly similar number of vulnerable customers as the FCA’s Financial Lives survey – around 50%. This is in contrast to some firms only identifying a single figure percentage.
MARS customers have access to an increased wealth of evidence for reporting.
What the FCA and the Government said this year
The year started with the FCA announcing its review of customer vulnerability. The results are out now. Consumer Duty Board Reports: Good and Poor practice | Complaints and root cause analysis: Good and Poor practice
In March, the FCA issued a survey to selected companies on how they were progressing with customer vulnerability – see the survey here.
In June, the FCA issued a clarification on the FCA’s guidance, on the need to “actively engage” with consumers.
In July, firms completed their first Consumer Duty board reports; the FCA undertook a review of around 200 firms, we understand the results will be out shortly.
September saw the publication of a report by the Chartered Insurance Institute, highlighting vulnerability as the hardest part of Consumer Duty.
In October, the FCA’s Graeme Reynolds delivered a speech at the PIMFA conference, saying: “In the firms that get this right, the first, vital, step is identifying vulnerability. You can’t begin to think about how to deal with vulnerability, how to meet your clients’ needs, if you haven’t first considered which of your clients might be vulnerable and why.”
Ofgem and Ofwat both made great strides to improve customer vulnerability management in the utility sector over the year.
The Consumer Duty board report has just been published; the overall feedback is that firms need to up their game on outcome reporting and vulnerability data.
MARS benchmarks firms’ results against those of the FCA’s Financial Lives survey
MARS software continues to lead, with unique features
Firms can now optionally manage customer vulnerability at a household level, as well as with individuals.
Significantly expanded management information with many new charts and benchmarks.
Added many more next steps – which we call ‘treatments’.
Development continues at pace and, in early 2025, we will enhance search functionality and the ability to record when and how mitigating processes were actioned.
More customers adopt MARS
MARS is now used across multiple sectors, including credit, debt management, building societies, wealth management, insurance, mortgage brokers and utilities.
New customers included PayPlan – the second largest debt company in the UK – and London & Colonial Assurance – our first international MARS client in Gibraltar.
The launch of our consumer portal, itswhoiam.me
To help firms position Consumer Duty and customer vulnerability with consumers, we have launched an online information portal, itswhoiam.me.
The website helps build trust and confidence, explaining why it will help consumers to volunteer information about their vulnerability characteristics. Check it out – we’d welcome your feedback.
The most popular customer vulnerability webinar programme
Over the year, we have delivered eleven customer webinars – to an audience of thousands. The most popular being “avoiding bad outcomes for vulnerable customers”, for which over 600 people registered. Via our own webinars and through partners, around 5,000 people signed up in 2024.
We continue to lead the sector with the provision of useful content – everything from understanding bad outcomes for vulnerable customers to harnessing the commercial benefits of Consumer Duty.
We record all our webinars, and they are all available on our website. Around 25 episodes are available.
We’d like to thank all of those who gave up their time and expertise to participate. This includes Alastair Reed, Alan Knowles, Margaret Kirby, Johnny Timpson OBE, Duncan Minty, Jonathan Clarke, Charlie Williams, James Edmonds, Kelly Melville-Kelly, Carol Nuttall, Daniel Edmondson, James Sudworth, Branko Bjelobaba FCII, Philip Michell, Nick McDonald, Peter Labrow, Adrian Harvey, Chris Fitch PhD FRSPH, Vaughan Jenkins, Martin Preston and Kay Haighton - thank you very much for your time and expertise! ❤️
Johnny Timpson OBE
Johnny Timpson OBE and James Edmonds join
One of the UK’s most recognised (and decorated) customer vulnerability experts, Johnny Timpson OBE OBE, became chair of MorganAsh. Johnny is one of the UK’s best-known vulnerable customer advocates, Financial Inclusion Commissioner and a founding member of the Financial Resilience Taskforce.
Leading Consumer Duty and customer experience specialist James Edmonds also joined us, as Consumer Duty consultant.
LinkedIn group – the place to go for customer vulnerability updates
Our LinkedIn group, Managing customer vulnerability, Consumer Duty and resilience, doubled in size.
We now have over 2,600 members – showing how customer vulnerability is a growing focus for many firms.
Useful customer vulnerability content
We published many blogs and white papers; many being run in the industry media. Some highlights are:
Customer vulnerability, your questions answered – a joint publication, authored with Elephants Don’t Forget, FWD Research and the Collaboration Network.
Will AI solve the customer vulnerability challenge? – co-authored with LexisNexis.
A 10-point checklist for customer vulnerability management.
All the best for Christmas and the New Year
We want to thank all our customers, everyone we’ve had conversations with, new partners, listeners of our podcasts and viewers of our webinars. Thanks all for your amazing support this year.
Wishing you a very merry Christmas, and all the best for 2025.
Andrew Gething and the MorganAsh team
