Consumer Duty at Beazley

It’s part of who we are - that’s why it’s one of our values. It’s not just important to us: doing the right thing by our customers is a fundamental part of a new regulation called Consumer Duty, introduced by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

The Consumer Duty sets the standard of care firms should provide to customers in retail financial markets. It consists of several elements:

Consumer Principle
A firm must act to deliver good outcomes for retail customers.

Three cross-cutting rules
Act in good faith towards retail customers

This is a standard of conduct characterised by honesty, fair and open dealing, and acting in line with the reasonable expectations of customers.

Avoid causing foreseeable harm to retail customers

Firms must take proactive and reactive steps to avoid causing harm to customers through their conduct, products, or services where it is in a firm’s control to do so.

Enable and support retail customers to pursue their financial objectives

Firms must proactively and reactively focus on putting customers in a better position to make decisions in line with their needs and financial objectives.

Four outcomes
Products and services outcome

Products should be fit for purpose, designed to meet consumers' needs and targeted to those consumers.

Price and value outcome

Products should be fairly priced and offer value to the consumer. Fair value is much more than just price: the product should respond how the consumer expects it to, and there should be a reasonable relationship between the price paid and the benefit a customer receives.

Consumer understanding outcome

Communications must give customers the information they need to support and enable them to make decisions that are effective, timely and properly informed. Communication must be in a way that is likely to be understood by the customers intended to receive the communication.

Consumer support outcome

Firms should design and deliver support that meets the needs of customers, including those with characteristics of vulnerability. This should enable consumers to realise the benefits of the products and services they buy, and avoid foreseeable harm.

At Beazley we strive to:

• Do the right thing by our customers and ensure good outcomes for our customers
• Understand our customers’ needs
• Offer products that meet our customers’ needs, provide fair value and avoid foreseeable harms
• Have clear policy wordings
• Have clear claims and complaints procedures
• Communicate  and engage with our customers in ways that enable them to make effective, timely and properly informed decisions
• Enable our customers to realise the benefits of the products and services they buy from us
• Recognise customer vulnerability and act on it appropriately and swiftly
• Monitor and regularly review the outcomes that our customers experience
• Monitor how our coverholders and delegated claims partners are ensuring good outcomes for customers
• Take action to improve our products, communications and support where we identify risks to good customer outcomes
• We value the strong relationship we have with our trusted third party distributors and claims adjusters.  We will actively work with them to ensure we all continue to reach good outcomes for our customers.

Our underwriting and claims teams are here to support any questions you may have on our approach to embedding Consumer Duty across Beazley.