by johnt
14. October 2010 08:58
The Financial Services Authority (FSA) aims to ensure that the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) can pay compensation to eligible depositors of a failed deposit taker firm quickly and effectively. From 31 December 2010, the Deposit Guarantee Schemes Directive (DGSD) will require that deposit guarantee schemes (i.e. the FSCS in the UK) pay out compensation within 20 business days of the default of a deposit taker.
A key element of these reforms is the requirement on deposit takers to develop a 'single customer view', this should put the FSCS in the position where it has the information required in order to make a fast payout, with a payout target of seven days from default and in any event within DGSD timeframes.
The FSCS intends to work with trade bodies, FSA, deposit takers and suppliers to ensure that firms are able to provide the SCV information in a format which is readily transferable to and compatible with the FSCS systems.
With this legislative pressure now being applied it is essential that deposit takers have clean data to work from. The only way to accomplish this task is to start from basics, getting the name and address details correct and ensuring there are no duplications within the data.
Using online data cleansing services companies can ensure that all addresses are held in a consistent PAF format, making matching and de-duplication easier. Any depositors who have moved can be traced using ‘goneaway’ files and communications restored. Additional data can then be added, telephone numbers can be appended to address data to give another method of communication.
This legislation will also have a longer term advantage for deposit takers as their marketing campaigns will benefit from having a single customer view, enabling them to contact their database effectively to cross sell and up sell.