MAINTAINING EFFECTIVE RELATIONSHIPS
We will work closely with other organisations, both at home and overseas, to combat financial crime, whether through contributing to international standard-setting bodies, sharing intelligence, or developing partnerships to coordinate action and bring people to justice, particularly if those crimes affect UK consumers or markets.
Working with consumer organisations
We will look at our regulation from a consumer’s point of view to ensure that it focuses on the people we are here to protect.
We are conscious of the lack of resources that some organisations have. We want to make the most of our relationships, engendering trust and encouraging a productive, open conversation. Simple steps, such as having one main point of contact for consumer representatives, will ensure that colleagues in these organisations know their issues are being dealt with properly. The FSA has already established a group called the Consumer Network, which includes organisations such as the Money Advice Trust and Citizens Advice, and will meet twice a year.
We will continue with this forum and it will help us listen to current and emerging concerns for consumers; it will act as a sounding board for policy development, issues and products work or emerging issues. We will retain the Consumer Panel, which will assist with these issues but also continue to provide scrutiny and ensure accountability.
Consumer groups do not always have the resources to develop the evidence that supports early intervention to prevent consumer harm, but we will encourage them to tell us about issues they spot as early as possible. Information from all sources will form the basis of our wider intelligence gathering, and we will use this to build a fuller picture of an issue.
We do not intend to inundate or overwhelm these organisations; we will carefully assess our requests to consumer groups for help and information. We will be flexible about the needs of the organisations and, where possible, we will do more things face to face or via online forums rather than always through written consultations.
Understanding consumer behaviour is important to our overall philosophy, as set out in the behavioural insights section in Chapter 5, and the way we engage with consumers. We will develop a detailed retail consumer segmentation model that allows us to understand both people’s attitudes towards financial services and what drives their behaviour. We will publish our findings in 2013. This work will link to our developing thinking on how we can utilise behavioural economics, and how this in turn influences our policy making and supervisory approach.
The way we engage with consumers will change as a result of both our strategic and operational objectives. We want to go beyond just making consumers aware of the FCA, so they feel reassured that we are there to protect them.
Simple steps, such as having one main point of contact for consumer representatives to talk to, will ensure that colleagues in these organisations know their issues are dealt with properly.
We will look at our regulation from a consumer’s point of view to ensure that it focuses on the people we are here to protect. To do this most effectively, we will work with consumer groups so we can better understand issues and emerging problems that people face – especially those related to straightforward products that most people use, like bank accounts or general insurance. We aim to make it as easy as possible for consumer groups to work with us so we can mutually benefit from their information, knowledge and experience to improve the way we regulate.
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