Vida FatemiUK Finance has responded to HM Treasury’s proposals to ban cold calling in financial services and is supportive of the proposals. The measures aim to protect consumers, particularly elderly and vulnerable customers, from fraud by enabling them to terminate and report unsolicited calls. While supporting the key proposals, UK Finance would like the ban to go further than just financial promotions and financial services, so it would aim to ban all forms of fraud. It is also concerned to ensure the ban does not cover B2B communications.
UK Finance has however proposed a carve out from the ban for relationship management activities, for example, where firms contact customers in financial difficulty or to otherwise fulfil their Consumer Duty obligations. It is concerned that firms need to maintain contact beyond mere relationship banking so they can properly support their customers. The response also offered alternative solutions to the issue, such as a standardised mechanism of deploying reverse identity checks and firms introducing a process that involved authentication to enable cold calling via agreed customer security process.