Financial services firms can meet regulatory expectations on paper and still lose customers when templates, channels, and handovers do not line up in practice.
Karen Peters, an experienced consultant at SEFAS, explains how firms can transform complex communications at scale while keeping compliance, readability, and customer experience aligned.
She has advised CEOs, COOs, and CTOs at board level on meeting regulations such as Consumer Duty and the European Accessibility Act (EAA), drawing on digital transformation, channel management, robotic process automation, and related work to remove friction in customer journeys without weakening trust.
The episode covers Consumer Duty readability, accessibility deadlines, data minimisation, AI guardrails, and how to rationalise legacy template estates without a disruptive big bang.
Created from episode transcript
Consumer Duty and the Reading-Level Challenge
Consumer Duty was introduced in July 2022, requiring financial services organisations to provide clearer, fairer, and more transparent communications.
Many firms are still not fully compliant, often because they rely on decades-old templates.
Regulators expect communications to be readable at about an 11-year-old's reading level, and accessible to visually impaired and other vulnerable customers.
With some banks holding up to 15,000 templates, bringing them all up to standard is a major task.
"It might seem daunting, but the key is to combine compliance with a positive customer experience - simpler language, clearer structures, and timely delivery."
Firms can either build accessibility into new templates or retrofit older documents in batches.
Both approaches support positive customer outcomes.
Eliminating Friction Across Channels
From call centre handovers to disconnected legacy systems, friction can erode trust and push customers to switch providers.
Disjointed journeys create a "cancel culture" effect: customers compare faster, more joined-up experiences from giants like Amazon or Booking.com with the more cumbersome routes still common in financial services.
"When a customer calls about a loan and wants to discuss their insurance, they shouldn't have to repeat themselves.
Centralising data and setting up a strong preference management system - what we often call a 'golden record' - makes sure every team knows the latest customer details and channel choices."
Data governance also has to extend to how sensitive messages are delivered, not only what is stored in core systems.
"When firms reduce friction in templates and channels but still send sensitive updates through ordinary email, recipients cannot always tell whether the message is genuine. Trust depends on consistency across the journey, including how data is protected in transit."
Paul Holland, Founder and CEO, Beyond Encryption (Mailock)
Where AI and Automation Fit In
AI can help with tasks such as scanning legacy documents for readability or jargon.
Robotic process automation (RPA) can manage repetitive tasks, freeing staff for more skilled roles.
"Generative AI or algorithmic approvals can be risky.
It's great for the donkey work - like identifying outdated templates - so long as a human signs off any changes that affect personal data or lending outcomes."
Sam Kendall works on digital marketing at Beyond Encryption, helping build B2B marketing activity around research, first principles, and sustainable growth. He writes about marketing effectiveness, positioning, customer communications, and digital culture, with longer-form work published at ATNL.
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Sam Kendall
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