Fears of assessment bias when identifying customer vulnerability are "not only unfounded, but risk delaying progress" on meeting Consumer Duty requirements and supporting customers, MorganAsh has warned.

According to data from the MorganAsh Resilience System (MARS), there is "minimal difference in the number of customers identified as vulnerable" between an agent or adviser’s vulnerability assessments, and those completed by the customer.

Of the 100 characteristics of vulnerability that MorganAsh assesses against, there was a mean variation of just 1% more by advisers, compared to that by customers directly.

Among the most severe characteristics, the firm found that the variation was even less, with a mean variation of just 0.1%, while for over 90% of characteristics, the variation of both methods was less than 2%.

MorganAsh’s new data reveals that any concerns that the method firms use may include bias that is unfolded.

Managing director at MorganAsh, Andrew Gething, argued that these fears can often lead to delays in assessing customer vulnerability and meeting the requirements of Consumer Duty.

He stated: "Despite the clear remit from the FCA and Consumer Duty, firms often delay assessing customer vulnerability because they are concerned about bias in the method used. While our data is not definitive for every type of business, all of our evidence suggests that any concern of bias is far less of an issue than feared.

"Benchmarking data between methods, distribution channels, offices and against the FCA’s own data is the best way to analyse the effectiveness of different methods. In all methods though, there absolutely needs to be a clear classification system to provide consistency in the data and enable meaningful analysis. MARS uses an objective severity range for each characteristic to generate an overall Resilience Rating for each customer.

"This will update with every assessment – and as characteristics change throughout the customer journey. It can be reported against and is shareable throughout the distribution chain, helping to meet the requirements of Consumer Duty and the demands of a regulator that actively wants to see better quality data and greater supervision of outcomes for vulnerable customers."

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