MorganAsh partners with Moneyhub to act on Consumer Duty

By Gloria Methri

MorganAsh has teamed up with Moneyhub to help firms deliver good outcomes for vulnerable customers, in line with Consumer Duty. The partnership will see MorganAsh, a support services provider, use Moneyhub’s Open Banking and Open Finance platform.

MorganAsh will be able to access customers’ financial data with their explicit consent to assist with real-time assessment and monitoring of consumer vulnerability. This function will be included within MorganAsh Resilience System known as MARS.

The newly accessible data will help highlight changes in behaviour and specific lifestyle indicators such as gambling or changes in employment. They can all be triggers for intervention by financial services firms. Real-time monitoring of income, expenditure, assets, and liabilities can alert firms to changes in circumstances and identify vulnerable characteristics.

Vaughan Jenkins, Business Development Director of Moneyhub added: “Consumer Duty and Open Finance herald a new era of customer-focused firms and financial resilience. Smart, forward-looking businesses will seize this moment and benefit from it. By truly understanding consumers and their ongoing needs, efficiency, productivity, and compliance will become positive side effects.”

The Financial Conduct Authority finalised requirements on Consumer Duty in July 2022 with implementation for open products by July 2023.  It requires financial services firms to act in good faith, avoid causing foreseeable harm and enable and support customers to pursue their financial objectives.

This means firms need to urgently reappraise how they identify, assess, and monitor the vulnerability of consumers throughout the product and relationship lifecycle.

Andrew Gething, Managing Director of MorganAsh said, “Consumer Duty adds the onerous task to monitor customers through the product lifecycle to ensure the product is still suitable. While our MARS tool can capture any direct contact from consumers and we can email consumers for annual updates, the potential to receive real-time data from Moneyhub will enable real-time monitoring so we can proactively contact consumers when their circumstances and needs change. This delivers real competitive advantages to our customers.”