Registry Trust, a not-for-profit organisation which maintains the Register of Judgments, Orders and Fines for the UK & Ireland, has responded to the Financial Conduct Authority's consultation on a new Consumer Duty.
The consultation acts as part of the FCA's campaign to increase awareness and the fairness of the County Court Judgment process.
Through the Consumer Duty, the FCA is looking to improve the levels of consumer protection in retail financial markets by setting higher expectations for the standard of care that firms provide to consumers.
"In essence, we want to see firms putting themselves in their customers’ shoes, asking themselves questions such as ‘would I be happy to be treated in the way my firm treats its customers?’, or ‘would I recommend my firm’s products and services to my friends and family?’," the FCA consultation paper read.
"The Consumer Duty would add to the range of regulatory tools we use to meet our strategic objective of making markets work well. Bringing together our consumer protection and competition objectives, it would help create an environment where consumers are better equipped to achieve good outcomes from financial services.
"To enable this, firms need to ensure that their products and services are fit for purpose and offer fair value, and that their communications and customer service enable consumers to make and act on well-informed decisions."
While Registry Trust supports the proposal by the FCA, it acted during the consultation process to offer a perspective that could positively impact the financial wellbeing of vulnerable consumers.
Specifically, Registry Trust highlighted an issue regarding the number of CCJs that are marked "satisfied", with the consumer currently required to inform the courts or Registry Trust that their debt has been paid in full.
However, this is not widely known and therefore, the number of judgments being marked as "satisfied" are falling, resulting in consumers lacking a way to prove their judgment has concluded.
Addressing the issue, Registry Trust wrote in its response this month: "We are concerned that these market information gaps are causing vulnerable consumers unnecessary financial harms such as limiting access to fair, affordable credit and hindering efforts to build financial resilience and inclusion.
"This could be addressed with a simple step which would cause relatively little disruption, but we believe would have a significant positive impact. We argue in our response to the FCA’s consultation that creditors should be required to notify the courts or Registry Trust when a CCJ has been fully or partially settled, rather than expect consumers to do this. We will be making the same point to the other sector regulators such as OFCOM, OFGEM, OFWAT."
Established in 1985, Registry Trust is a non-profit which partners with the government to provide a public service, with its data used in 224 million business decisions in 2018.
