Treating customers fairly (TCF) and intermediaries

The Financial Services Board's (FSB) Treating Customers Fairly (TCF) regulations came into effect more than a year ago in order to address concerns about what boiled down to 'unfair treatment' from a number of financial services related institutions.

This legislation wants institutions like Santam - and your brokerage - to put customer fairness at the heart of its operations. In a survey conducted among Santam policyholders in 2013, it was established that the majority of Santam policyholders are individually happy with the way they are treated at Santam, even though half of the respondents indicated that they believed customers generally receive unfair treatment from most South African financial institution.

Santam would like to remind intermediaries of the required outcomes of the TCF legislation.

TREATING CUSTOMERS FAIRLY OUTCOMES:

Outcome 1: Customers are confident they are dealing with firms where the fair treatment of customers is central to the firm's culture.

Outcome 2: Products and services marketed and sold in the retail market are designed to meet the needs of identified customer groups and are targeted accordingly.

Outcome 3: Customers are given clear information and are kept appropriately informed before, during and after the time of contracting.

Outcome 4: Where customers receive advice, the advice is suitable and takes account of their circumstances.

Outcome 5: Customers are provided with products that perform as firms have led them to expect and the associated service is both of an acceptable standard and what they have been led to expect.

Outcome 6: Customers do not face unreasonable post-sale barriers to change product, switch provider, submit a claim or make a complaint.

Adopting TCF in your business

Intermediaries must demonstrate the adoption of a TCF culture in their businesses and the delivery of TCF outcomes for their clients. It is the FSB's view that the responsibility of fair treatment lies with both the supplier of the product and the intermediary. It is thus important that we provide a joint value proposition which answers each of the above-mentioned outcomes.

At Santam, we have worked extremely hard over the past few years to ensure that our claims handling service, marketing, contact centre and broker distribution infrastructure fulfills its task in ensuring that both our intermediaries and policyholders receive the best service possible to this end.

Click here to read more about TCF legislation.

For more advice and tools to grow your business visit our intermediary advice page.