Katie Hancock - our vulnerability champion
My name is Katie Hancock and I have recently been asked to take on the responsibility of becoming our vulnerability champion. My role is to understand, identify and support clients who may be vulnerable and to ensure they are supported through our whole client journey.
In October 2020 the FCA’s financial survey found over 50% of UK adults display at least one characteristic of vulnerability, an increase of over 3 million people since February 2020 – the need for improved outcomes for vulnerable clients has never been greater.
Vulnerability is such a varied subject and covers so many different aspects of everyday life. Occurrences in our lifetime can deem us as being vulnerable such as bereavement, divorce, home schooling, giving up work to look after children/elderly relatives, loneliness, ill health to name a few. Vulnerability can happen to anyone of us in our lifetimes and please be assured it is nothing to be ashamed of - we are here to support you.
Some of the updates that we have recently undertaken within our company are: working closely with internal and external companies to gain knowledge and understanding. I have been contacting charities and agencies to build relationships so we can give help and support in many aspects of vulnerability. I have re-written company policies and procedures, attended training sessions and have provided training to our whole team to ensure needs are met each and every time.
The Financial Vulnerability Taskforce is a newly created independent professional body covering the personal finance, insurance and wider financial service sector. Its ultimate purpose is to promote greater understanding, encourage appropriate behaviours and establish good practice in respect of consumer vulnerability. They have created a charter which individuals and firms are able to adopt to align an independent set of standards which are equally inline with the Financial Conduct Authority. It gives us great pleasure to tell you that we have adopted this Charter within our company, and we look forward to working alongside other professional bodies to provide good outcomes for all our clients.
The Charter can be viewed by clicking here.