Treating Customers Fairly arrived in South Africa as a regulatory framework in 2011 and has since been written into the General Code of Conduct, the Policyholder Protection Rules and the FSCA's conduct supervision model. Most FSPs have a TCF policy. Far fewer can show, file by file, that the six outcomes shape how they actually sell, advise and service clients. This article sets out what embedding TCF means for a practice with one or two Key Individuals and a handful of representatives, and what evidence the FSCA looks for when it asks.
The six outcomes, in the words of a small practice
The outcomes are deliberately written as results for the client, not as rules for the firm. For a small FSP they translate like this:
- Culture. The Key Individual can explain how fairness is decided when it conflicts with revenue, and the representatives can give an example.
- Products and services are sold to the clients they were designed for. A funeral policy is not sold to a client whose need is retirement income.
- Clear information before, during and after the sale, in a language and format the client can follow.
- Suitable advice that takes the client's circumstances into account and is recorded in a way a third party could follow.
- Products perform as the client was led to expect, and the service around them meets the standard promised.
- No unreasonable post-sale barriers to changing a product, switching providers, claiming or complaining.
Where TCF lives in a small FSP
The FSCA does not expect a committee structure from a three-person practice. It expects to find TCF in four places.
The Key Individual's decisions. Product selection, the approved product list, remuneration arrangements and the handling of conflicts are TCF decisions. Minute them, even briefly. A one-page note that records why a product was added to the shelf and for which client segment is Outcome 2 evidence.
The advice file. Section 8 of the General Code already requires a needs analysis, a product comparison and a record of advice. TCF asks whether a reader can see the client's objective, why the recommendation meets it and what the client was told about costs, exclusions and alternatives. That is Outcome 3 and Outcome 4 in one document.
The service standards. Write down what a client can expect: how quickly calls are returned, how long a claim or a change request takes, who to contact when something goes wrong. Measure it once a quarter. Outcome 5 and Outcome 6 are impossible to evidence without a standard to measure against.
The complaints register. Every complaint, including the ones resolved on the phone, goes into the register with the outcome and any root cause. A register that shows learning (a form changed, a script corrected) is the strongest culture evidence a small FSP has.
Building the evidence trail
A TCF framework that works in practice has three layers:
- A TCF policy of two or three pages that states the outcomes, assigns ownership (usually the Key Individual) and names the records that evidence each outcome.
- A self-assessment against the FSCA's TCF self-assessment questions, completed once a year and reviewed by the compliance officer. Gaps become actions with dates.
- Monitoring that samples advice files, service turnaround times and complaints against the outcomes, and reports the findings to the Key Individual.
RCC includes TCF sampling in every compliance monitoring programme and runs TCF training for representatives so the outcomes are understood, not just filed.
What the FSCA asks for
At a conduct review or in a thematic request, the questions are practical: show us your TCF policy, your last self-assessment, three advice files chosen by us, your complaints register for the past twelve months, and your service standards with the measurements. A practice that can produce those five items in an afternoon has embedded TCF. One that cannot has a policy on a shelf.
Start with the next file
The quickest way to begin is to take the next advice file your practice produces and read it as a client would. If the objective, the recommendation and the reasons are clear, TCF is already in the file. If they are not, that is the first finding, and it is yours to fix before the FSCA does.
