Financial services firms need to distinguish three questions that are often collapsed into one score:
- Can a client complete an important task?
- Does the experience support confidence and a good commercial relationship?
- Does the firm meet its legal and regulatory obligations?
An outside-in benchmark can observe the first two in part. It cannot determine the third from public pages or a test portal.
The source says Distinction assessed 40 mid-market B2B financial services firms across six dimensions and publishes quartile scores. No firm list, fieldwork dates, scoring rubric, assessor process or underlying data appears in the project files. The figures may come from real work, but they are not presently reproducible. Hold all ranks and percentages until the research record is supplied.
This article preserves the framework and explains what evidence a defensible benchmark needs.
Regulatory context is a boundary, rather than a score
The FCA's Consumer Duty concerns firms delivering good outcomes for retail customers within its scope. A B2B financial services audience can include clients and products outside that scope, so do not use the Duty as a universal label for every firm in a mixed benchmark.
Where it applies, communications, support and outcomes require attention beyond the presence of disclosures. The authorised firm and its advisers remain responsible for interpreting obligations. An experience review can identify observable friction, missing context or inaccessible routes and send them through the proper compliance process.
Security perception also differs from security posture. A consistent domain, intelligible login and clear error message may affect confidence. They cannot show whether access control, encryption, monitoring or incident response is effective.
The related article on digital trust as a competitive advantage in financial services explores that distinction in more depth.
Six observable dimensions
Website clarity and navigation
Can a prospective client identify the entity, service, audience, relevant people and appropriate next step? Test genuine buying and service journeys, rather than rating visual polish.
Include regulatory identity and limitations where they affect understanding. Check mobile, keyboard and assistive use.
Authenticated service usability
Can approved test users complete relevant tasks such as viewing status, retrieving a record, uploading information or reaching an adviser? Record task success, error recovery, information currency and permission behaviour.
A document repository should not score highly merely because it exists. Equally, the absence of a portal is not automatically poor if another secure route serves the client's tasks well.
Onboarding
Examine how the service explains steps, requests information, handles identity and eligibility checks, preserves progress and provides human help. Necessary friction should be clear and proportionate.
The source reports one firm reducing onboarding from 12 days to three after digitisation. That result needs definition, baseline, change set, sample and permission.
Self-service
Identify routine tasks clients should be able to complete without avoidable delay. Assess permissions, status, accessible alternatives and the point at which professional support is required.
The benchmark should never reward moving a consequential decision to the client merely because fewer staff touch it.
Mobile continuity
Test tasks people actually perform on a phone, such as reading an alert, confirming an action or locating a document. A complex analysis may reasonably continue on a larger device. Score continuity and suitability, rather than forcing a mobile-first ideology.
Timely communication
Assess whether the experience explains events, actions and uncertainty at useful moments. Distinguish contractual or regulatory communications from optional relationship activity. More notifications do not prove better support.
The original framework listed “security perception” as a sixth dimension and later substituted proactive communication in the scoring table, creating an internal inconsistency. A revised methodology must decide which is measured. Both may be retained as separate dimensions if the research supports seven.
What the source findings would need to show
The article claims:
- 26 of 40 firms lacked adequate self-service
- 28 of 40 had compromised mobile experiences
- 85% presented regulatory information poorly
- Top, median and bottom quartile scores across six dimensions
Before those numbers return, the report needs operational definitions. What counted as a portal? Which tasks defined adequate self-service? How was mobile tested? How did assessors rate communication that may be visible only after authentication? How were disagreements resolved?
The sample also needs boundaries: countries, dates, firm sizes, services, regulated entity types and selection method. Wealth management, insurance, asset management and corporate finance have different users and obligations. Aggregating them can hide more than it reveals.
A transparent report should publish limitations and avoid causal language. Outside-in assessment can describe an experience; it cannot prove retention, trust or regulatory outcome.
Benchmark against tasks and an appropriate peer set
A useful client report can compare the firm's task performance with a small, relevant peer group. Select peers by service, audience and market, rather than brand familiarity.
For each task, record:
- Starting context and user
- Steps and completion
- Information supplied and missing
- Assistance and recovery
- Device and accessibility observations
- Confidence and assessor notes
- Regulatory or security questions requiring specialist review
Show examples and confidence alongside any score. A total out of ten can conceal whether a firm failed one critical task and performed well on five minor ones.
Patterns worth investigating
Several source observations remain useful as hypotheses.
Information exists and remains hard to retrieve. Portals organised around internal systems can force clients to know where the firm stores a statement or tax record.
Calendar communication overlooks material events. Event-led contact may improve relevance when triggers, review and preferences are governed.
Mobile layout passes while the task fails. Forms, PDFs, login and recovery can remain difficult on a responsive site.
Formal information is available without being comprehensible. Plain-language context may help, provided it preserves approved meaning and does not create a conflicting version.
Public marketing is stronger than service delivery. A polished website can coexist with weak onboarding or self-service. Benchmark both sides of the relationship.
These patterns should guide research and prioritisation. They should not be presented as sector prevalence until the data is auditable.
What a firm can assess now
Choose five client tasks and test them with approved accounts and representative users. Include a prospect task, onboarding step, information retrieval, event communication and adviser escalation.
Capture completion, time, errors, workarounds, support demand and user explanation. Review across roles and accessibility needs. Add operational evidence such as repeated document requests and failed authentication, with data-quality caveats.
Then compare with relevant peers and the firm's own service promise. The most valuable gap may be a critical internal handoff that no outside-in benchmark can see.
You'll find the checklist download on this page.
We've put together detailed thinking on the investment case for firms ready to act on these findings - worth reading if the numbers here are making you uncomfortable in a productive way.
The first is the self-assessment checklist. Download it below, work through it honestly, and use it to have a specific conversation with your board about where you are relative to your competitive set. It won't tell you everything - a self-assessment never does - but it'll give you a sharper picture than "we're probably about average."
Book a scoping conversation - it's exactly what it sounds like, and it doesn't commit you to anything.
