4 million reasons to be compliant

At TotallyMoney, we’re on a mission: we want to help everyone move their finances forward. One of our core values is transparency, ensuring the best outcome for customers and helping them achieve their financial goals.

As a Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) regulated business we must follow the rules and requirements set out by the regulators and  ensure applicable laws are followed. If we don’t our licence could be taken away meaning we would no longer be able to operate, or serve our customers. 

The compliance team is therefore essential to ensuring the business understands what’s required, and the associated risks. All while it continues to grow and help its customers.

Here are five ways we do this at TotallyMoney. 

Prioritising customers is core to what we do at TotallyMoney. We’re passionate about putting our customers in control of their own data and providing them with the information they need to achieve their financial goals. 

A key focus of the FCA is to ensure that customers are treated fairly, and those more vulnerable in society receive the required support. So with the compliance team keeping TotallyMoney in line with the regulatory guidelines, we are also keeping the business focussed on putting the customer first and aligned to its mission.

We usually find ourselves bridging the gap between teams, so we’re often brought into projects from the start. That way we have a full overview and can provide input on how to remain compliant along the way. 

By doing this we can make sure that customer outcomes are considered along every step of the journey, rather then having to give feedback at the end and potentially impacting on go-live dates

A great example is our work on a new set of emails, which deliver personalised alerts to customers on their credit balances to encourage them to take action where needed. We played a major part in the early planning and the design, writing and implementation stages, delivering a feature aimed to help customers with their debt as much as possible.

For me, the ideal is for compliance to be embedded across the business – instead of only being approached when we’re needed or something goes wrong.

If we’re to stay true to both ours, and the FCAs values of treating everyone fairly, honestly, and transparently, it’s vital that the whole company knows who we are. 

Elsewhere, some may see compliance as something that blocks them from getting things done, but  at TotallyMoney, we’re making compliance “normal”, so people don’t feel they have to wait to speak to us. 

Here compliance is an enabler, helping to get things done. And because compliance works across the business, often we can be the unblocker, finding a solution that everyone is happy with.

Because we work cross-functionally, it’s crucial to be flexible when working in compliance.

With the vast majority of projects requiring compliance input somewhere down the line, it’s really important we can jump between different jobs, usually throughout the day. 

In the morning we may have a meeting to discuss an exciting new feature with the product team, needing to ensure customers are at the centre of the discussion and then in the afternoon, we might need to turn on our analytical brains to review some data for our communications.

The pandemic has had a big impact on people’s finances. Subsequently the FCA brought in lots of new guidance  to try and protect the increasing number of vulnerable customers from financial harm. So, it’s been as important as ever to keep up-to-date on these changes and what’s going on in the wider credit and finance markets.

We also have to make sure we keep the rest of the business informed so that our  communications and product are  up-to-date with the fast-moving changes, regulations, and guidance. . That way, the business can remain fully-focused on delivering a better product for our customers.

As a business, we pride ourselves on being customer-centric and helping every single customer move their finances forward. The best way we can do this is to make compliance, and everything associated with it, a central part of the company’s culture. If the customer is at the forefront of everything, compliance comes naturally.