Caring for all our customers

At Paragon, we recognise that delivering good outcomes for all our customers means that sometimes, some of our customers will need extra care and attention.

Whether as a result of poor health, an unfortunate life event, low capability or resilience, even the most able of us may find it challenging to manage our financial affairs efficiently at some point during our lives. Significantly, it’s at times like these, that we need to be able to reach out to our banks and financial services providers for help and to trust them to treat us fairly and prevent us from foreseeable harm.

To help us support customers effectively through difficult times, we nurture a culture where employees understand what factors drive customer vulnerability, can recognise the signs that a customer might be having difficulties and have the authority to take supportive action.

We believe that all our processes should be suitable for customers in vulnerable circumstances and we have reflected this in our policies.

We take great care when designing new products to make sure product features and literature are easy to understand. Equally, in our correspondence with customers, we use straightforward language and avoid confusing jargon.

All our employees receive training, at least annually, to help them better understand the issues that customers in vulnerable circumstances might face. And, as you would expect, our customer service specialists receive additional training to help them identify the signs of actual or potential vulnerability so that, with the customer’s consent, we can offer additional support.

We’re constantly enhancing our capabilities to support customers who face difficulty and we work together across all areas of our business to share best practice and foster a culture of continuous improvement.