This year the FCA is exploring if it's guidance and approach to vulnerability should change. Learn about these changes when they happen and put your organisation at the forefront, by attending the UK Finance Vulnerability Academy.

Whilst firms are making progress to address the expectations of the regulator, many firms recognise the need to improve their internal knowledge and understanding of the key issues facing their colleagues to ensure customers are treated fairly and appropriately. In response to this, UK Finance and the Money Advice Trust have launched the Vulnerability Academy.

Download the Vulnerability Academy Brochure (PDF)

Background

Many firms recognise the need to improve their knowledge, policies and practical responses to the challenges their colleagues face in identifying and supporting customers in vulnerable circumstances.

However, in a political and regulatory environment where ?vulnerability? remains a fluid concept, and where firm conduct, resources and commercial pressures are under scrutiny, firms need to plan and prioritise.

In response to this, UK Finance and the Money Advice Trust have partnered to launch the Vulnerability Academy.

An effective response

Policy and organisational ambitions on vulnerability cannot be met unless three conditions are fulfilled:

1. Colleagues have the necessary skills, knowledge and confidence to deliver these ambitions through training.
2. Training initiatives must tackle the actual challenges and tasks that colleagues encounter daily ? ?awareness raising? about vulnerability will not, in itself, deliver practical change.
3. Each firm's wider environment must facilitate colleagues taking effective actions on vulnerability by developing quality assurance, monitoring and compliance functions, data architecture and dashboards, and other functions on vulnerability.

This means that an effective response to vulnerability must also be led by and make parallel improvements to the strategic, policy, governance and information environments that these colleagues will be working in.

The Vulnerability Academy is for people who want to gain the skills, knowledge, and relationships to address the most challenging issues and scenarios and meet regulatory requirements.

Booking:

If you would like to register for the Academy, please email training@ukfinance.org.uk, or call the team on +44 20 3934 1014 .

How can the Academy help?

• Download the Vulnerability Academy Brochure (PDF)

At its core the Academy is a learning environment where senior managers will have the opportunity to meet, question, and work with leading thinkers across sectors. They will follow a programme that includes five one-day workshops, supplemented by webinars (using voice, graphics and interactive features to engage learners and reinforce the key workshop messages), podcasts (a deep-dive understanding of the issues via interviews with experts, guests and practitioners), plus elearning, reading lists and downloadable resources.

Participant development
The Academy will require participants to build up throughout the course a personal ?gap analysis?/critical appraisal of their organisation's approach to vulnerability.

The aim of this ?gap analysis? portfolio is to allow participants to reflect on the specific challenges (and solutions) that they perceive in terms of addressing vulnerability within their own work, while being able to share more general challenges and issues that every single firm will encounter at some point.

Sharing best practice
Participation in the Academy requires participants who are willing to be challenged by the material, but who will also challenge our speakers and one another as well. The aim throughout is to open and change both participants? minds and practice.

Learn more about the Academy:

• Download the Vulnerability Academy Brochure (PDF)
• Read our latest vulnerability blog: Improving Outcomes for Vulnerable Customers
• Watch our latest vulnerability webinar (8 Feb).