Britain’s Financial Services Authority says it has seen some improvement in financial firms’ treatment of retail customers, but there is much more to do.

Speaking to bankers at a conference in London Wednesday , Oliver Page, the FSA’s director of major retail groups, drove home the message that firms had more to do to implement its Treating Customers Fairly principles.

Following the publication of the TCF progress report last year, the FSA wrote to the chief executives of 35 major retail groups asking for them to use the publication as a guide to assessing their delivery of TCF. The overall response has been encouraging. The FSA found that firms have been most successful where they have linked their TCF programs to wider strategic changes in the organization. Other firms have successfully linked their TCF programs to reviews of their corporate brand and corporate values. As a next step, the regulator will write to the next tier of the largest retail firms.

The FSA recognizes the issues for a major bank are different to those facing a small mortgage or financial adviser. The regulator’s TCF consultative group of firm and consumer representatives will consider the issues for small firms and how the TCF agenda for them can be best delivered effectively.

“The FSA is encouraged by the early signs we see of TCF progress at firms, but there is still a long way to go before we reach our goal, which is to persuade the senior managements of all firms to accept their responsibility for their firm’s delivery of these principles. This will be done by management taking the lead in their firms, ensuring they drive their organisation to think through how to ensure TCF is built consistently into the operating model and culture of all aspects of the business to produce fairer outcomes for customers,” Page said.

Page also repeated the FSA’s commitment to introducing regulation only where market-led solutions for market failures could not be found.

“The FSA has rules relating to TCF, and we could deal with the shortfalls in the implementation of the TCF principle by adding yet more detailed rules, but we do not see that as the best outcome for firms or for consumers,” Page said in a release. “The success of a solution based on the TCF principle, which makes clear the requirement to treat customers fairly but allows firms the flexibility they need to deliver it, depends on firms taking the action needed to ensure that the principle of fair treatment of customers is a reality.”

http://www.fsa.gov.uk/pubs/press/2005/020.html