CITRUS Funding has signed a long-term agreement with APD Compliance to utilise a customised version of APD’s real time Compliance.360 platform to monitor the behavioural conduct of Appointed Representatives handling financial and insurance products in the UK and gather evidence of satisfactory consumer outcomes.
The agreement includes the use of APD’s end to end product which handles data cleansing, outbound surveys, analysis, performance alerts and 24/7 online digital reporting along with access to a suite of additional features including the use of advanced AI sentiment analytics to uncover trends and important messages within verbatim comments.
APD’s Mark Hughes said: “We are excited to work with Citrus on delivering a communication tool which will enable the voice of the consumer to be included for the first time in assessing adherence to the Financial Conduct Authorities (FCA) directives including the proposed overarching Consumer Duty requiring firms to ‘deliver good outcomes for consumers’.
“This contract marks the beginning of a seismic change in the approach to evidencing consumer outcomes with a proactive approach to real time safeguarding of consumer interests and increasing the standards of the conduct of the providers of finance and insurance products as required by the FCA’ he continued.
Bea Wheelhouse, Managing Director of Citrus Funding, added: ‘We are delighted to be working with the team at APD. This extra layer of insight into the way the services and products of our ARs are received by customers will be an invaluable tool in supporting our continuous cycle of improvement and development.
In addition, it will give us a clear lens on the outcomes for our customers and allow us to react immediately when things are not as they would expect, thus raising the benchmark in terms of quality and fair customer outcomes.’
