Covid-19 - Financial Services Sector needs to act now to reduce calculation errors!

With the UK government taking unprecedented steps to safeguard jobs, homes and financial wellbeing, the Financial Services market is having to react quickly. However, with operational workarounds being put in place promptly and the processing of immediate payment holidays there is undoubtedly going to be errors that can seriously impact your customers.

Earlier this week the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) announced in its business plan that it will protect the most vulnerable throughout the pandemic. It’s key focus is to ensure that customers retain access to essential banking services and can benefit from flexibility on mortgage and other debt payments. In addition, ensuring that financial services businesses and markets know what is expected of them. A core prerequisite of the FCA’s plan has been that lenders need to ensure they act in line with Principle 6 of  the Mortgage Conduct of Business rules (MCOB),  stating that “A firm must pay due regard to the interests of its customers and treat them fairly”.

At Exasoft Group we understand the current challenges you face. For Mortgage payment holidays there may be timing issues if payment has been taken and it needs to be reversed, arrears processing and enforcement action may need to be turned off, or recalculations of payments and extension of terms need to be introduced. In addition, calculating the revised CMP and/or term of the mortgage without introducing errors, daily monitoring of accounts to safeguard against interest or charges being applied incorrectly, variation reporting to verify your systems are handling accounts as expected and rectifying any undue variances through corrective transactions.  For credit cards there may be issues around minimum payments, higher interest rates and the freezing of credit.    

However, what’s ultimately important is that these areas of risk are dealt with timely, correctly and effectively.   

We work with the UK’s largest financial service firms and our leading Redress Manager rectification software is utilised by the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) and the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS).

 

Our solution incorporates the following benefits:

• A mortgage industry leading calculator and rectification solution
• Customer call centre portal
• Reduction in manual effort to administer and monitor mortgage payment holidays and other rectification calculations.
• Reduction in the risk of error and potential future customer detriment
• Improved communication with your customers

 

Our wealth of experience stems from working on large rectifications and we are keen to work proactively with firms at these challenging times to avoid long term detriment to their customers.

Our Head of Client Services Dave West would be delighted to work in partnership with you to assist with any rectification issues that you may currently be experiencing or to give you a free overview of our Redress Manager software.  Please do get in touch with Dave West, our Head of Client Services and together we can ensure that all customers are protected.  [email protected]  Tel: +44 (0) 333 8000 165