Laura WilesThe Lending Standards Board (LSB) has published its Business Plan and Budget for 2023/24. Its focus areas this year will include financial resilience and digital journeys, and its ongoing work on the prevention of APP scams.
The key work programme for this year includes a continuing internal review of the Standards of Lending Practice for personal customers, the continued roll out of LSB’s programme of cyclical compliance reviews, and a full review of the Standards of Lending Practice for business customers to gauge the need for amendments to reflect the evolving lending market (including its policy-led research on green finance).
LSB will also be undertaking a significant project cross-cutting both the Standards of Lending Practice and CRM Code which will:
- Consider data and metrics available to firms to identify and assess customers at risk of financial difficulty, and investigate how firms may proactively use this information to:
- mitigate the risk of financial distress occurring; and
- reduce the impact when a customer does experience financial difficulty.
- Assess customers’ digital journeys to understand how increasingly digitised and data-driven customer interactions and journeys are impacting good customer outcomes.
LSB has budgeted expenditure of £3.5 million to deliver its programme of work, compared with a forecasted spend of £3.3 million for 2022/23.