Marketing for Financial and Professional Services Firms
We are experts on Culture, Customers, Channels and Communications and will help you:
- survey and engage your customer base or distribution channels to establish perceptions and need
- position or reposition your brand in your sector
- create channel programmes to build loyalty
- develop communications in plain English
- add real value to your business
The landscape's changing
for Life
The FSA's Retail Distribution Implementation Programme will change the way financial product providers take products to market from 2012. So now is the time to think about the problems and opportunities you’ll face.
To all Life & Pensions Providers:
By 2012, you could lose the loyalty of your sales channels and struggle to rebuild the reputation of a financial services sector badly mauled by recent crises. Or, you could be the Life & Pensions provider of choice:
- with the products customers want
- with a brand they can trust
- with successful multi-channel distribution
- and an IFA fan base
Using our world class channel and brand marketing expertise developed from years of experience in other fast moving and competitive industries, we'll help you to:
- engage your channels
- understand and deliver on their needs
- discover what your current and future customers want from you
- build positive, high-trust relationships
In June 2009, the FSA (Financial Services Authority) published the results of its consultation with the FS industry on the distribution of retail investment products to consumers. Insurance, pensions, and financial planning are some of the services that will be impacted. According to the FSA there are 3 fundamental objectives behind the regulatory shake-up:
- improve the clarity for consumers of the characteristics of different service types and the distinctions between them
- raise professional standards
- reduce the conflicts of interest inherent in remuneration practices and improve transparency of the cost of all advisory services
Product providers will no longer be able to pay commissions to IFAs for selling their products; their challenge will be to build channel loyalty through value-added services and explore alternative routes to market. Creating consumer pull, rather than relying on channel push, will be more important than ever.
For IFAs the landscape will change too. They'll need to invest in higher professional qualifications and will have to charge clients for advice - since they will no longer be remunerated through product commissions. This means a massive focus on proposition development and branding: why should a client buy advice? How does the IFA demonstrate value, performance and trustworthiness?
Industry players will have until 2012 to adjust and re-build their business models, strategies, systems and marketing. Many have already begun. When the FSA release the detailed timetable, the rest must start some serious thinking, research and planning.
Treating Customers Fairly
If you’re an IFA or an accountancy or other financial institution with a retail investment management service, then ‘Treating Customers Fairly’ is now a MUST HAVE component of your business. From December 28th 2008, firms regulated by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) are required to demonstrate that they treat their customers fairly, through consistent and ongoing management behaviour and practice.
Client Engagement
We can design and implement ongoing client surveys and work with you on feedback plans, to help you become even more customer-focused. and help meet the Treating Customers Fairly regulations.
You'll enjoy sharper client insight, more informed decision making and you'll be able to show how your customers feel about doing business with you.
Tailored surveys
TCF is not the same as client satisfaction though they have much in common. Each firm will have a number of different indicators depending on size and type of business and how far they already meet the FSA requirement. This means that our surveys are not off-the-shelf, but tailored to suit your specific needs.
Client feedback
Can you demonstrate an embedded process for listening to your customers? Are enquiries and complaints recorded, evaluated and acted upon? Does this impact on strategy and communications decision-making and can you show how? We can help.
Clear Communications
Our communications include the writing and design of staff and customer magazines and newsletters and the development of employee engagement programmes that will ensure your staff are fully aware of TCF and - more importanty - fully committed to it. Our experts already write for and inspire some of the UK's biggest financial services companies and understand the importance of clear communications in plain English.
Your staff
should understand what customer fairness means to them and how they can make it happen. We write engaging internal communications so this is not left to chance. We can help you communicate through staff magazines and newsletters, intranets, climate surveys and other employee engagement programmes such as workshops, seminars and conferences.
Your product, sales and marketing materials
must be clear and easy to understand. Unambiguous and accurate, but also exciting and compelling. That's a difficult combination that needs experienced, excellent writing and design. Our communications team can work with your technical product managers to achieve this.
Your customers
will want to see how you are truly focused on them. Most of the larger financial institutions publish customer magazines for good reason: you can demonstrate how things are changing for the better; you can show how you've listened; you can celebrate all the ways in which customers come first. Our communicators already write, design or produce for Barclays, LloydsTSB, Prudential, Chelsea and others - but excellent client communications are effective for any size of firm.
Using technology
For larger organisations, we offer a portal-driven solution for marketing and knowledge transfer to support your achievement of FSA compliance and add real value to your business.
You'll be able to collect, manage and share the right management information with the right people at the right time. A portal can give you anytime anywhere access to all the key parts of your business that impact upon Treating Customers Fairly. For example:
Sales data
can be collected into secure folders or displayed through the portal from existing MI systems - you can use the technology to monitor and analyse advisor performance to ensure appropriate process and recommendation has been made and any off-target trends identified and actioned.
Client feedback data
from surveys, complaints or enquiries can be logged and analysis displayed through the portal. You can even use the portal's workflow function to set up auditable processes, if you haven't yet got any.
Links to HR and training records
mean you can keep all your employee records in one place for the purpose of proving technical and behavioural competences are in place, consistent with a culture of Treating Customers Fairly.
