FSA retail markets managing director Clive Briault has said many financial services firms have made progress over the past year on its Treating Customers Fairly (TCF) initiative.
Briault said he had been encouraged by firms around the country that have identified areas of their business where they are not meeting the TCF objective and put in place programmes to address shortcomings.
He added that a number of senior executives had referred to TCF as an entirely natural way of describing how they had to improve their customer offering – and not as a regulatory obligation that they had to meet.
Briault also welcomed the initiatives taken by many trade associations to help their members with TCF implementation.
Briault said: "TCF needs to be embedded into the culture of a firm at all levels, so that over time it becomes business as usual. This is very much a
responsibility of senior management, not just a compliance issue."
He added that the FSA is now building TCF into its Arrow visits. "Supervisors will look at the approach that a firm has taken to treating its customers fairly, including both initial 'gap analysis' and subsequent actions to address any resulting issues."
