It goes without saying that as a company who values its customers, we place great value in treating you fairly in all of your dealings with us. This covers how we design products, how we communicate with you, the service you receive, how we pay claims and how we respond if you complain.
We aim to respond to all complaints quickly and fairly and to explain our actions or decisions. This includes cases where we can’t do something you ask, perhaps because this wouldn’t be fair to other customers.
It’s important for us to recognise that different people have different needs, while making sure we’re fair to our different customer groups. For example, we can provide Braille copies of literature.
We also make sure that all of our customers who complain know they can challenge our decision by writing to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS).
How are we doing?
- In the 2006 Customer Impact survey, 79% of our customers agreed or strongly agreed that we treat them fairly.
Level of agreement with statement ‘AEGON Scottish Equitable treats customers fairly'
Source: ORC International, 19 February 2007
- During 2006, we had more than four million phone calls, letters and emails from and personal meetings with customers. Of these, 5,927 were complaints. Although we don’t want our customers to have anything to complain about, we do recognise that complaints provide valuable feedback on our service.
- The Customer Impact survey tells us that we need to get better at handling complaints. We’ll be carrying out more research with customers to make sure we improve how we deal with your complaint if you feel you need to make one.
- Everyone has the right to contact the FOS if they’re unhappy with how we’ve responded to a complaint. In 2006, 83 of our customers asked the FOS to review our decision. In only six of these cases, did the FOS agree that we hadn’t dealt fairly with the complaint.
- Although our processes and systems play a part, we know that much of how well we’re doing is about how our employees deal with you and with one another. Earlier this year, we developed new criteria, including ‘think customer’, ‘encourage excellence’ and ‘act with integrity’, to make it absolutely clear what we expect from them.
What we’ll do differently in 2007
- The lesson we’ve taken from 2006 is that we need to get better at explaining our decisions to customers who complain. If we can’t do what you ask, we want you to understand why and accept our decision as fair
- At the moment, most complaints are dealt with by the team who deal with the ongoing servicing of your plan. Although there are benefits to this approach, the alternative is to have a central, highly trained team of complaints professionals who can focus all their efforts on resolving individual complaints, and identifying and monitoring wider trends. We’re currently extending a pilot of this alternative approach to our group pensions business. If it’s successful, we’ll consider adopting it for all of our customers.
- We’ve also set up a company-wide group to analyse the root cause of the problems you experience. This senior group is responsible for identifying why things have gone wrong and making sure that changes are made to address these issues.
- We’re building a new framework to measure our employees’ performances, covering such behaviours as ‘encourage excellence’, ‘think customer’ and ‘act with integrity’, into our recruitment, development and reward processes. This will help everyone really understand that how we do things is as important as what we do.
