Treating customers fairly

Essential to this delivery in encompassing the six TCF fairness outcomes in the insurance lifecycle, is that the company has adopted a "top down" approach to TCF leadership in the company, making TCF an integral part of the company's business model and business objectives.

To this extent, the company has formed a TCF Steering Committee, identified TCF champions within senior management and has begun developing key performance indicators for management and staff. The company is in the process of utilising the FSB TCF self-assessment tool as a guide to monitor and assess the delivery of TCF.

Developing processes

The TCF champions follow salient TCF objectives, which include performing gap analyses of existing practices to identify where the TCF fairness outcomes are not being achieved, in order to drive to fruition. The company is currently developing processes to report on achieving TCF deliverables to the board, relevant board committees and the executive.

Through assessing the creation of an internal TCF Framework, Lion of Africa Insurance has found that encompassing TCF management information, governance and control mechanisms are all vital to achieving TCF performance, to treat customers consistently fairly in an effective and transparent manner.

Furthermore, it is important to assess TCF within a company, as it impacts on existing and new products and product design, in terms of catering for customers' needs as they require transparent and fair product information. At Lion of Africa Insurance all applicable service level agreements with providers are reviewed and assessed in terms of the fairness outcomes. A TCF risk register was developed by the company in order to assist in providing desired outcomes.

Training

The company is also in the process of offering training to all intermediaries who sell the company's insurance products. In terms of customer communication, Lion of Africa Insurance is focusing on more effective and expedient ways to communicate with customers. This is important to maintain effective customer complaints resolution.

TCF will also be utilised for training and education purposes at the company. To achieve this, the company has begun building a series of questions for staff to complete and provide feedback, essentially designed to enhance their understanding of the TCF philosophy and developing roles and responsibilities in delivering TCF.