MorganAsh has announced new functionality and upgrades to its customer vulnerability management platform, MARS (MorganAsh Resilience System).
In the latest update to MARS, MorganAsh has added new functionality to record how and when suggested support (next steps) are recommended to clients, as well as their clients’ reactions and whether they take-up the recommendations. Firms using MARS can record if support is pending, partially completed or not implemented. Also, firms can log if support is incorrect, not required or declined by the consumer, with notes available to add for all progress and against each suggested next step.
The new feature recognises the important role of recommending and monitoring as part of a firm’s customer vulnerability management strategy, as well as their wider Consumer Duty requirements. By adding this functionality, MARS users can stay up to date with progress to ensure that interactions with consumers are appropriate. A record is available for audit purposes, allowing firms to report on which support action is being taken up by consumers and implemented to mitigate harm.
In addition, MorganAsh has enhanced the reporting function within MARS, allowing firms to see the proportion of vulnerable customers by both the FCA’s vulnerability categories and MARS vulnerability categories. Users can now benchmark their company’s results against all MARS users – providing a useful gauge of progress.
The new upgrades to MARS follow the recent findings from the FCA’s vulnerability review, which found that many firms still can’t monitor or take action on outcomes for vulnerable customers.
MARS now has more than 80 standard pathways – the ‘next steps’ presented to users when a characteristic of vulnerability is detected. Previous updates have given firms the option to configure pathways, set triggers to suite their business.
MARS aims to take the complexity away from assessing consumer vulnerability, using input from consumers themselves to generate an objective measure of consumer vulnerability – which can be tracked over time and reported on. It enables businesses to adopt a consistent approach to identifying vulnerable characteristics and generate an objective Resilience Rating – much like a credit score.
Andrew Gething (pictured), managing director of MorganAsh, said: “This latest upgrade to MARS strengthens the ability of users to record, track and report on the support offered to vulnerable customers. In truth, this is a key stage within the wider vulnerability management that firms must undertake – particularly with increasing emphasis from the likes of Consumer Duty.
“While it is important to identify, classify and monitor potential vulnerabilities, we also need to help mitigate any potential harm and then track whether that suggestion was suitable or even taken up. We can then monitor outcomes more effectively and determine whether a poor outcome was mitigated. We must track all these individual stages as each one can fail. Without good quality data at every stage, it’s impossible for firms to know what is going on for the individual or where the failure point truly is.”
