Making the sales process work in financial services

How to use FCA guidance as a step change for success

Anyone working in or around the financial services sector will be more than aware of the major policy changes that have fundamentally altered the way sales teams work. Following numerous high profile problems, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) create and review these regulations and this process is set to continue for some time yet.

The aim of the FCA is to generate a set of customer-focused guidelines for those selling financial products and services in the UK to follow. As a part of this, there is understandable pressure to ensure that, through strict policy and procedures, long-term culture change is achieved and in particular through the transformation of incentive schemes.

The successful incorporation of these changes continues to present significant issues for businesses, so, the pressing question now is: how do HRDs and managers get involved in the strategic planning of how a salesforce operates and deal with these policies to moderate and drive change for the better? This was one of the key questions we posed as part of a series of round tables undertaken by Resource Management (RM). We spoke with some of the UK’s leading HRDs to understand better what could be done to enable positive change – both for business and the employee.