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.