As financial service firms await the findings from the FCA’s survey of 20 of the largest ongoing advice service providers, it’s an important time to consider assets under advice and their associated charges.

The regulator is collating data about:

• The number of clients who were due a review about the ongoing suitability of their advice
• How many of those clients received their review
• The number of clients who paid for ongoing advice but were later refunded as the review did not happen

And it’s not only the regulator that is firmly focused on the impact of ongoing advice services. Claims management companies have reportedly already approached clients and submitted complaints to wealth management firms at the centre of the exercise.

Justification for ongoing service fees

It’s clearly a critical juncture for ongoing service providers to take stock and understand the extent of any problems in their back-book whilst establishing a robust evidential trail for the future.

Over recent months, TCC’s compliance experts have been working with clients to consider their Consumer Duty approach and have witnessed an inadequate consideration of ongoing advice service charges. Our skilled team understands that each ongoing service provider will have circumstances unique to them – but no matter the stage you’re at in identifying any issues, we can help.

With our trusted technology partner, Recordsure, we have designed an innovative three-pronged approach so you can manage your ongoing advice services in the most compliant way while delivering fair value and good outcomes for your clients.

Our approach can be used individually or collectively to assess the extent of any issues in a firm’s case population, recognise and resolve historical issues or provide preventative measures for future risk.

1. Assess your current position with an AI-powered health-check

TCC’s experts use artificial intelligence (AI) to review the quality and suitability of a firm’s given advice, which can prove to be 50% more efficient than traditional methods.

By combining the power of smart people and smart tech, we can provide an in-depth evaluation of 1,000 of your client cases with an AI-powered health-check by utilising Recordsure’s CaseReviewAI solution.

The AI will take a random sample of client cases from your practice management system (PMS) and segment them into three groups:

RED: Absence of all core review documents for the lifecycle of a client (during any service review period)
ORANGE: Absence of some core review documents or essential topic coverage within these documents
YELLOW: All core documents and topics were covered

AI cannot determine whether advice provided is suitable, so there is a further GREEN segment—that requires human expertise. But as this is a process designed to identify the clearly problematic cases (based on the evidence stored within the PMS) and not a full past-business-review (PBR) – it helps you to identify the areas of concern that both the FCA and the claims management companies are targeting.

Once the AI-driven health-check is complete, our compliance specialists will review a sample of RED, ORANGE and YELLOW cases to confirm the size of the problem and investigate the root cause (e.g. failure to attempt contact, unable to agree a review time, refusal of service, review complete but not documented properly etc.).

We then compile a summary report, which can be used to determine your next steps and supplied as evidence to the regulator if required.

People-powered health-check alternative
If you’re not ready to use the AI-powered health check just yet, you can opt for a people-powered service. In this service, TCC’s experts will take a smaller sample of your population and conduct a manual case review. And it comes complete with a summary report that can be used as evidence to the regulator and demonstrates that your firm is taking proactive action to comply with its requirements.

2. Recognise and resolve historic issues with an AI-powered triage
Once companies have a clear goal in mind for their active and closed cases, they can seamlessly integrate their entire portfolio with Recordsure’s secure AI-powered CaseReviewAI product. This allows them to categorise their ongoing advice services population into the RED, ORANGE, and YELLOW segments mentioned above, or a customised variation of them.

This detailed analysis provides valuable insights into clients who may have missed scheduled service periods or received inadequate reviews that do not warrant ongoing charges. This insight opens the path towards necessary actions such as refunding unjustified fees. With CaseReviewAI’s workflow capabilities, specific case segments can be directed to appropriate inboxes for your case handlers, ensuring consistent and efficient management based on tailored processes for each segment.

Get the right people to resolve your issues
We provide expert guidance on compliance procedures, offer specialised resources to assist you in handling rectification and complaint processes, and even offer a full outsourcing service to handle these tasks on your behalf.

3. Prevent future issues with AI-powered ongoing reviews

Addressing past gaps and incomplete reviews will help you avoid scrutiny from claims management companies, which tend to focus on organisations that are not actively resolving these issues. Plus, the FCA will require proof that your clients are receiving the ongoing advice they are paying for.

Tackle this challenge, with our unique technology, and implement a set of controls linked to your PMS to pinpoint clients who have not received the services they are paying for.

Your compliance leads can easily report on – and resolve – missed or perlocutionary reviews before they become a problem. This enables you to either provide the necessary service or cease charging the fees.

With TCC’s regulatory expertise and the cutting-edge technology of our trusted partner, Recordsure, we provide a unique compliance combination to ongoing advice service providers.

Get in touch to discuss how TCC can help your firm overcome its ongoing advice service challenges.