In brief
According to the FCA’s Consumer Duty, asset managers with UK businesses should have “board level data and metrics” on “how clients behave at every stage of the journey and whether you achieved good outcomes for them.” Introducing Accomplish’s Asset Management CX Scorecard.
A UK obligation to monitor client behavior
Over 2023 and 2024, the UK Financial Conduct Authority’s Consumer Duty came into force. Its goals are to set higher and clearer standards of consumer protection across financial services and require firms to put their customers’ needs first.
Among the specific rules (“musts”) and accompanying guidance (“shoulds”), an asset manager with a UK-regulated entity:
- Must regularly monitor whether they had a good outcome on customer behavior or, where a firm does not have direct contact with retail customers, on the outcomes of its service within the distribution chain.
- Should take behavioral biases into account while ensuring they avoid inappropriately manipulating them.
- Should have board-level data and metrics on their continuous search for and response to issues relating to good customer outcomes.
As the FCA summarizes, you should oversee how clients behave at every stage of the journey and whether you achieved good outcomes for them.
But what is a “good outcome”? Beyond the regulator’s helpful examples, how can firms be expected to know the specific standard they will be held to?
Furthermore, what if being good, in your own opinion, turns out not to be enough?
A commercial no-brainer?
Aside from complying with regulations, overseeing the experience you give to your clients should be a commercial no-brainer for any executive with a long-term stake in their company.
CX is measurable in time and money by how clients behave along the pre- and post-sale experience. This data is complete, accurate, measurable without disrupting clients, and is already in your systems.
Because of this, the firms in the institutional Client Behavior Benchmark already track the performance of their CX every quarter.
This gives them a commercial advantage because if their CX outperforms, clients will give more time to them … and their money will follow.
Until now, however, this has only been possible via the Benchmark’s client journey (see screenshot) and supporting analytics, which are rich in the insights that heads of CX need. But, in practice, it is too detailed for a board-level briefing, limiting the oversight senior executives have been able to exert.
Introducing the Asset Management CX Scorecard
To solve this problem, Accomplish has upgraded the Benchmark to include an asset management CX Scorecard:
✓ Board-level data and metrics.
✓ Client behavior at every stage of the journey and the relative performance of the outcomes you achieved.
✓ Out and underperformance, in time and money, across your pre- and post-sale CX.
With this new and unique tool, asset managers can now access an independent and quantitative assessment of whether they achieved “good outcomes” compared to other asset managers.
Boards can now track progress, prioritize attention, and respond effectively
In practice, you can customize the scorecard to include performance over multiple periods and key messages that summarize Accomplish’s unconflicted recommendations. These features let the board track progress, prioritize their time and attention, and respond in an informed way.
An obvious question they will ask will be about what has been done in response to the results, for which reason Accomplish’s Dynamic Distribution Strategy proposes a blueprint for how Distribution Leadership Teams can harness vital lessons learned about competing in a survival-of-the-fittest market.
Lastly, and looking to the future, this Consumer Duty-compliant capability provides the platform the industry needs to build a version of the Benchmark for wholesale / intermediary clients. We have a project underway for this and look forward to keeping you updated on it in future months.
3 steps to CX excellence
We hope you found this article about the asset management CX scorecard useful. If you would like to act further, here are Accomplish’s 3 steps to CX excellence:
- Book a personal tour.
- Check the readiness of your CX data.
- Pinpoint, in time and money, where your pre-sale client experience out and underperforms at engaging clients.
