The Personal Finance Society (PFS) has launched a competency diagnostic tool to identify key areas of training needs to ensure adviser compliance with Consumer Duty.
Proficiency+ Consumer Duty was developed in collaboration with business-critical competency management specialist Cognisco and practicing personal finance professionals.
It employs situational judgment tests (SJTs) to evaluate an employees’ ability to make appropriate decisions or judgments in work-related scenarios.
For each work scenario, users are asked to select the most appropriate response from a set of options. They are then asked to gauge how certain they are that their answer is correct, using a confidence scale.
The results provide insight into what employees do and do not understand, and the level of confidence attributed to each of their answers. The ultimate aim is to indicate which employees are going to apply the right or wrong behaviour in any given scenario, allowing firms to target training where it is needed the most.
Key benefits of the tool include the ability to:
- Identify the areas in which training should be prioritised to create the biggest return on investment
- Demonstrate to the FCA that a firm is actively investing in the necessary skills to drive good customer outcomes
- Measure and enhance the influence of training on employees
Don MacIntyre, interim CEO for the PFS, said: “We are delighted to share the PFS’ new Consumer Duty Proficiency+ diagnostic tool with the profession.
“We have developed the tool with practitioners and against real world scenarios to ensure that all who use it can take tangible steps towards raising industry standards, building public trust, and facilitating the cultural shifts outlined in the FCA’s Consumer Duty guidelines.”