In the last edition of our magazine, I spoke about some exciting CCTA plans to further develop our services as a trade association. This edition presents a good opportunity for me to update our members. Both long-standing members and those who have joined us recently.

In short, it has been a busy period for the CCTA team but our plans have progressed well.

Last time, I spoke about CCTA introducing more workshops and guidance papers on key regulatory topics.

Consumer Duty dominates our work

As many of you will know, we delivered the first of those workshops in August. This covered the Consumer Duty and the key considerations for our members. It was a hugely successful workshop. It was attended by over 100 members and we received a lot of positive feedback.

Following the workshop, we published our Consumer Duty Guidance Paper. This supported and guided our members in not only understanding the Duty but also the key implementation and operational considerations.

We continued with in-depth discussions around the requirements and expectations of the Duty at our recent Autumn Summit. But our work on Consumer Duty does not stop there. We know it remains a key regulatory topic. Not just during the implementation phase, but for years to come.

We are now working on delivering the next set of workshops and guidance papers. Before the end of the year, and going into early 2023, we will be covering key topics such as illegal money lending, online and social media financial promotions, commission disclosures, complaint handling and MI in light of the Consumer Duty and Statutory Debt Repayment Plan (SDRP) scheme, to name a few.

In fact, members will have seen the recent release of our second guidance paper on the FCA’s improvements to the Appointed Representative (AR) regime. This is a must-read for our members who have or plan to have, appointed representatives.

Similarly, we previously spoke about a review of all our core regulated and non-regulated agreements and statutory documents. A lot of members use these.

Recognising the Consumer Duty, we have improved readability, layout, and accessibility. Key financial information, as well as terms and conditions, are clearer and aid consumer understanding. We are now at the latter stages of final review and approval and aim to release the new versions towards the end of the year.

Plans for an online training platform for CCTA members

We are starting discussions with some potential online training platforms and software providers. We previously mentioned our intentions to introduce training and CPD for our members. Although our discussions are at very early stages, we intend to launch compliance training as soon as practicable. Our plans are to make available training modules that will cover many of the key legal and regulatory topics in our sector.

These include (but are not limited to) complaints, financial promotions, CONC, the Consumer Credit Act, treating customers fairly, vulnerable customers, anti-money laundering, anti-bribery, Consumer Duty, whistleblowing, data protection/GDPR and SM&CR.

CCTA Planning for 2023

As we approach the end of 2022, here at CCTA we are already planning what 2023 will look like. And whilst we continue to further develop some of the services mentioned above, we are equally as keen to hear from our members. Your feedback, suggestions and ideas will help us focus on what really matters to our membership community.

As such, before the end of the year, we will be carrying out a ‘Member Survey’ exercise.

Please keep an eye out for this as we would love to hear your feedback and suggestions on all our services, including our annual conference, summits, workshops, guidance papers and communications, as well as our advocacy and policy initiatives.

Naturally, we will continue to update our membership base with any key developments in our industry, as and when they happen.

Finally, as ever, your CCTA team are available for any queries or support that you need. You can contact us via our Advice Line service and we will be happy to support in any way we can.