Stockport-based debt advice firm GW Financial Solutions has adopted the MorganAsh Resilience System (MARS) – enabling it to identify and support vulnerable clients faster, more consistently and at greater scale than was possible through manual processes. This move adds to MorganAsh’s growing reputation in the debt advice sector, which includes its work with PayPlan, one of the UK’s largest providers of free debt advice.
Data from MARS shows that 99% of debt advice clients are in vulnerable circumstances – by far the highest proportion of any financial services sector. For GW Financial Solutions, this is the everyday reality of its client base. The firm wanted to enhance their systematic, auditable approach to customer vulnerability management that could keep pace with demand, support advisers consistently – and produce the management information required under the FCA’s Consumer Duty.
Following a successful trial, GW Financial Solutions has integrated MARS directly into its CRM system via the MARS API (application programming interface – this enables the two systems to ‘talk to each other’ securely and easily). The client’s information is gathered at first contact, and a Resilience Rating is generated automatically – and crucially, an instant recommendation of any appropriate support needs is surfaced for the adviser. This eliminates the requirement for a separate customer vulnerability screening step, keeping call times lean and immediately giving advisers clear, consistent guidance, without relying on memory or extended training programmes.
Adam White, director of GW Financial Solutions, said: “Ensuring we support our vulnerable customers is always a priority for us. MARS provides additional support to our agents, enabling them to respond to our clients effectively, consistently, and at scale. Support recommendations are delivered as part of the normal conversation, so advisers know exactly what action to take. MARS has also provided additional data insights, enabling enhanced management information (MI) to support our Consumer Duty reporting.”
The integration also addresses the Consumer Duty reporting challenge directly. MARS captures structured vulnerability data across the entire client book, enabling GW Financial Solutions to report on the prevalence and nature of vulnerability, track changes in client resilience over time and produce the evidence-based management information the FCA expects firms to demonstrate at board level.
Andrew Gething, managing director of MorganAsh, said: “The debt advice sector has the highest concentration of vulnerable clients in financial services, and GW Financial Solutions has long understood that. MARS delivers the ability to handle vulnerability characteristics consistently and efficiently across every client contact – good information for clients, instant guidance for advisers, and clean data for reporting. We’re delighted to be deepening our presence in the debt advice sector with a firm that shares the same commitment to getting customer vulnerability management right.”
