Finance Monthly January 2020 Edition

29 www.finance-monthly.com FINANCE & BUSINESS - PPI SCANDAL The failure to communicate transparent and correct information to customers has rightly led to a rise in customer complaints. In 2019 alone, customers have brought more than 388,000 complaints before the Financial Ombudsman – a 14% increase from 2018. PPI remains the product most complained about, with over 70,000 new complaints in the first half of 2019. With today’s digital natives ready, willing, and able to switch banks if their issues are not resolved expeditiously, banks should be worried about this rise in complaints. The Financial Conduct Authority has been encouraging business leaders to take responsibility for their firms’ failures, and to recognise PPI as an institutional failure rather than the fault of individual ‘bad apples’. Banks need to reflect on their internal failures and understand which processes are failing customers by developing a holistic view of all business operations and customer touchpoints. Embracing these vital strategies and ensuring all internal processes run simultaneously and reliably means banks can easily identify bottlenecks within their delivery, and keep their external communication with customers accurate and transparent. Acting on real-time intelligence will not only enable banks to keep pace with customer demands, but also ensure the correct information is being communicated at all times. Banks also need to ensure that their end-to-end processes are regularly reviewed and updated to avoid incorrect data entering and remaining in the system. If processes are not updated or managed – particularly high-volume processes – then customer data may be incorrectly entered, stored, or acted on. Integrating reliable technology systems and training staff to review processes from a customer perspective must be top priorities. Sources: https://www.fca.org.uk/ppi/ppi-explained https://www.ft.com/content/9032df8a- d3e1-11e9-a0bd-ab8ec6435630 https://financefeeds.com/uk-financial- ombudsman-service-registers-6-drop-in- complaints-about-derivatives-in-2018-19/ https://financefeeds.com/uk-financial- ombudsman-service-registers-6-drop-in- complaints-about-derivatives-in-2018-19/ https://www.ft.com/content/07827d94- c973-11e9-a1f4-3669401ba76f