Consumer Duty at Atom bank

Consumer Duty is a standard of consumer care for the financial service sector. Here, you can find information about what we’re doing to meet our responsibilities to our personal finance customers.

What is Consumer Duty?

Consumer Duty sets out the expectations for firms to deliver a high standard of customer care and protection within the financial services sector. It is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and came into effect in July 2023. The aim of the new rules are to increase current levels of protection for customers and improve the way that UK financial services firms treat their customers and meet their needs.

What are the expectations of firms?

The general principle behind Consumer Duty is for firms to deliver good outcomes for their customers, including:

  • Acting in good faith towards customers.
  • Not causing foreseeable harm to customers.
  • Enabling and supporting customers in pursuing their financial objectives.

These principles should be reflected in products and services, price and value and consumer understanding and support.

What is Atom doing about Consumer Duty?

Under these rules, you can be confident that:

  • We are designing products and services to meet the needs of personal finance customers and they’re being provided to those with the need for them.
  • Our pricing of products and services represents fair value.
  • Our customer service meets the needs of our personal finance customers, helping them to realise the benefits of our products and services and always acting in their interests.
  • Our communications allow personal finance customers to make effective, timely and properly informed decisions about financial products and services.

In addition, we’ve made a number of changes and updates to how we work and communicate with you to make sure that we are meeting your needs as a personal finance customer under Consumer Duty.

Some of these have included:

  • Updating our app and website so that the information you need about our bank, products and services is clear and accessible.
  • Introducing new processes and procedures internally that ensure we’ll always act in your best interest.
  • Reviewing our fees and charges to make sure that they are fair and in line with Consumer Duty.
  • Reviewing all of our terms and conditions and our customer communications to ensure they’re fair and easily understandable.
  • Making our fair value disclosures available to brokers to ensure they can meet their Consumer Duty responsibilities and deliver good customer outcomes.

Want to know more about Consumer Duty?

If you want to find out more about Consumer Duty and what it means for the financial services sector, please visit the FCA’s website.