"With Marketing Cloud, we can interrogate massive volumes of unstructured data to provide greater insight into issues in the industry."

There are around 50,000 consumer credit firms in the UK. And the Financial Conduct Authority➚ (FCA) has just two years to make sure every one of them applies to be authorised as part of a new – and much tighter - regulatory framework.

As Victoria Raffé, Director of Authorisations at the FCA, explains: “The consumer credit industry is very diverse, and we need a standardised way to capture, present and analyse data – whether it involves payday loan providers and pawnbrokers or credit card issuers and hire purchase firms.”

Community Cloud will be used as an enabling service as part of the new regulatory approach, underpinning the authorisation gateway. As an online platform, it enables rich collaboration between employees, customers, partners, suppliers and distributors based on tailored content, data and business processes.

The applications received via the gateway will be processed and risk assessed by the FCA’s team using customised Service Cloud workflows, which were developed using the Salesforce Platform.

“With the new workflows, we can seamlessly collect and validate applications from a large volume of companies,” comments Raffé. “Improved data usability and accessibility will also help us make faster decisions.”

The FCA became responsible for the regulation of the consumer credit industry on 1 April 2014. “We had a very short window to introduce a completely new regulatory regime and all the underlying processes,” explains Raffé.

Salesforce is also supporting other areas of the FCA’s work, which includes regulating the UK’s financial services industry to ensure that consumers get a fair deal.

The FCA’s contact centre receives around 9,000 calls per month from consumers. Every call and subsequent case is logged in Service Cloud. “We can allocate and categorise calls faster,” comments Raffé. “This not only makes us more efficient but enables us to spot trends so we can take action earlier.”

When investigating cases about a specific firm or topic, the FCA will be able to supplement its existing intelligence with social media information captured by Marketing Cloud. As Gareth Lewis, Chief Information Officer at the FCA explains: “With Radian6, we can interrogate massive volumes of unstructured data to provide greater insight into issues in the industry.”

The FCA has also been able to make its own data more accessible to a select few authorised users with the Salesforce Mobile App and improved reporting capabilities. Instead of reports being generated periodically, they are now available in real time.

“By transforming how we work, we have enabled a step-change in efficiency that will result in better protection for millions of consumers,” concludes Raffé.