MorganAsh has made several upgrades to its vulnerability tool for advisers as part of its preparations for the implementation of Consumer Duty.

The firms’s MorganAsh Resilience System (MARS) will now allow users to book an appointment, in real time, for a nurse assessment, which is designed for circumstances where the consumer has severe physical or mental health issues, or where the adviser needs an independent party to undertake the assessment.

New Consumer Duty rules, which are being introduced by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to improve customer protection, are due to come into force from 31 July.

To support the platform’s objective “resilience rating”, MorganAsh has also introduced greater functionality around treatments. Now, its users can choose to assign a treatment between resilience ratings and between age groups.

This is in addition to greater configuration options, which MorganAsh said will support different use cases and appetites for risk. Users can personalise the contents within vulnerability questionnaires, the depth of detail in assessment certificates – and the text of emails and messages to be sent to consumers, among other features.

Firms will also have the choice to set specific options on individual cases or to set options at a firm level.

“As we get closer to the implementation deadline of Consumer Duty, we’re really pleased to be supporting our users across financial services with these upgrades to MARS,” said MorganAsh managing director, Andrew Gething.

“In its latest correspondence, the FCA has made it very clear that investing in technology and data strategy should be a clear focus for firms as we head towards full implementation in July.

“Fundamental to all of this is an objective and consistent approach to managing and monitoring vulnerability data. These powerful upgrades aim to make that task much easier for all firms.”

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