Business Context
The macro-environment in Consumer Law and Financial Services industry is increasing the focus and complexity of conduct and remediation, due to the following key factors:
- Rising conduct regulatory pressure, in particular with the increased standard of Consumer Duty;
- Increasing financial distress and customer vulnerability due to the Cost-of-Living crisis; and
- Heightening consumer expectation in an increasingly competitive market.
A successful remediation is of strategic importance as trust is restored and good outcomes are delivered to customers.
Against this backdrop, Mass Claims Remediation Matters are typically performed for a variety of clients, ranging from Product Organisations defending mass claims for conduct issues through to work done on behalf of Financial Services to redress consumer loss, distress, or inconvenience, as a result of a mistake or breach of regulation.
Hence remediation cases can vary considerably from reasonably straightforward “low value” complaint cases which require high levels of process automation through to incredibly complex “high value” breach of contract cases which require little automation.
Examples of these are as follows:
- A Financial Services provider has mis-sold an insurance product, such as Payment Protection Insurance, whereby the consumer has suffered loss due to unfair commission charges, poor product value or suitability.
- A manufacturer has mispresented product efficiencies or product value whereby the consumer has suffered loss, inconvenience, or distress. For example, the use of illegal software to misrepresent the volume of emissions omitted by diesel cars.
- Government legislation changes to enable redress for loss, inconvenience, or distress. For example, changes in the Banking Act 2009 (Fees) enabled consumers to claim back certain bank charges from their financial services provider.
For volume Remediation matters our clients require the following:
- Minimising fee earner touch points with the defendant (due to high volumes of cases), e.g., portals to enable client self-serve access to status updates, integrate with chatbots, use web forms, links to FAQs/info resources, etc.
- Minimising manual touch points with the claimant/consumer, e.g., portals to enable self-service access to status updates, use of web application forms, links to FAQs/information resources, etc.
- Automating (wherever possible and appropriate) the management of initial eligibility assessment.
- Automating the production of communications to interested parties.
- Minimising the complexity of service design for client mandates, e.g., portals to enable the configuration of mandate variables to govern the management of matters.
For high-value remediation claims to be efficient, our clients require the following:
- Best in class matter management capabilities.
- Flexible rules to meet the requirements of client mandates.
- Ability to collaborate with key stakeholders such as clients and claimants.
- Upstream eligibility assessment at point of application.
- Traceability from evidence to redress awards or outcomes.
- Ability to kick-off workflows in an ad hoc fashion but otherwise manage the case according to their needs.
- Ability to quickly delegate and re-allocate tasks across multiple people involved with the matter.
Solution Components
The following diagram illustrates the overall solution components for the Remediation Solution Accelerator.
| Element | Description |
|---|---|
| Instructions |
Instructions are the primary container for the processing of inbound instructions for Defendant Remediation services. Just like any other items of work in ShareDo they can be specialised to meet specific processing requirements. Using instructions, you can model the different data and processing requirements for different Remediation Dispute types such as consumer or business. In the case that all Matters are incepted in a separate system, instructions may not be used. |
| Multi-channel | ShareDo is a multi-channel contact application. What this means in practice is that communications can be received via post, email, fax, SMS, or via portals and seamlessly translated into work items for further processing. |
| Matters | Matters are the primary container for the management of legal cases for the entire life cycle. The matter container provides all the tools and processes to facilitate the efficient management of the case, whilst supporting compliance with regulatory and business protocols. |
| Workflows | In ShareDo, smartplans control workflows, which can be as intelligent (or dumb) as you like and are triggered from a multitude of events across the application. |
| Finance Work Types | ShareDo supports a variety of finance work types including invoices, payments, budgets, fees, quotes, settlement, offers etc. These are typically associated with Matters. |
| Compliance Work Types |
ShareDo also supports a variety of compliance work types including conflict and duplicate searches, AML and the like. These work types are typically initiated via workflows often as part of the instruction or client matter inception process. |
| Task and Activities | Out of the box, ShareDo provides a number of core task building blocks. Examples of these include doc automation, contact (email, fax, SMS), appointments, telephone calls and the like. In a similar fashion to all other work types, these can be extended for specific processing needs, called from smart plans and so on. |
| Litigation / ADR | ShareDo provides a specialist work type for ADR and litigation. The dispute resolution modeller is used to configure specific ADR and litigation types, such as arbitration, mediation, and litigation tracks across multiple jurisdictions (e.g., Group Applications). |
| Client Mandate |
In ShareDo, Matters (and indeed instructions) are performed under the control of a Client Mandate. The mandate will define for a given set of Matters items such as:
|
| Personas | When users view ShareDo what they see is determined by their persona. Essentially, personas provide users with a targeted contextual experience of the solution. Examples of personas include Fee earners, supervisors, B2B or B2C clients. Different personas are then shown different screens or widgets within the ShareDo application. |
| Organisational | Managing work requires people, users, and teams. Within ShareDo you model these together with their permissions and the rules by which they are allocated. |
| Integrations | ShareDo isn’t an island and will typically be plugged into a number of internal or external services such as document management systems, reporting tools or third party services such as court or address services. |
Matter Type Support
The solution accelerator is designed to support the following matter types:
| Element | Description |
|---|---|
| Remediation |
Top-level work type for the management of remediation matters within the context of a client mandate. Subtypes include:
|
The structure above is typically replicated for differing jurisdictions and is fully extensible.
Related Accelerators
ShareDo's accelerators are designed to be componentised, with common accelerators being referenced by other accelerators. The Remediation Solution accelerator should be implemented with reference to the following accelerators.
| Solution Accelerator | Description |
|---|---|
| Client Matter Inception | Describes the process for onboarding clients and instructions. The Remediation Accelerator extends the base functionality for Matter Inception with remediation-specific fields and workflows. |
| Proceedings – Part 7 CPR – England & Wales | Describes the configuration and workflows associated with managing proceedings of these types as a claimant. |
| Proceeding – Part 19 – Parties and Group Litigation – England and Wales | Describes the configuration and workflows associated with managing proceedings of these types for both claimant (pursuer/applicant) and defendant (defendant/respondent). |
| Proceedings – Civil – Scotland (inc. Group Proceedings) | Describes the configuration and workflows associated with managing proceedings of these types:This Accelerator provides support for Business and Consumer Mass Claims Remediation out of the box and can be easily extended via ShareDo's low-code Work Type modelling tools to include other Mass Claim Types (e.g., employment, financial, product, event, etc.). claimant (pursuer/applicant) and defendant (defendant/respondent). |
Solution Highlights
The following table lists some of the highlights of the solution from the Remediation Accelerator.
| Highlight | Description |
|---|---|
| Extensible support for all Remediation Types | Out of the box this Accelerator provides support for Business and Consumer Mass Claims Remediation and can be easily extended via ShareDo's low code Work Type modelling tools to include other Mass Claim Types (e.g., employment, financial, product, event etc.) |
| Manages all aspects of the Remediation Lifecycle. | The Accelerator can manage all aspects of the Remediation lifecycle from instruction to eligibility, RFI, pre-action, settlement, payment monitoring, litigation, and enforcements. |
| Configurable for all work management styles | Vary your processing style for each remediation type and processing team. For volume remediation, adopt a Straight-Through Processing style with a low or “no touch" approach. For complex remediation, change this style seamlessly with workflows designed to assist your case handlers. |
| Bulk Upload Instructions | Using ShareDo's Excel data load upload feature, extensible Excel upload can be pre-configured to enable the bulk upload of instructions. 
|
| Eligibility Assessment and Allocation |
Utilising ShareDo's scorecards, remediation Matters can be assessed for eligibility and complexity.
And this complexity rating used to allocate cases to specialist or technical processing teams. |
| Personalise your service for different clients via Client Processing Variables |
ShareDo enables you to embed your client-specific SLA and Processing Variables within the Mandates under which your Remediation cases will execute.
This enables you to quickly onboard new clients and update existing clients to work the way they want. |
| Intelligent Workflow Driven Collections Strategies |
The Remediation Accelerator provides several example key-stage workflows that can be used as the basis of your matter management life-cycle (e.g., RFI, Legal Case Assessment, Settlement).
These can then be extended using the workflow designer. |
| Budgets and Schedules |
The Remediation Accelerator provides out-of-the-box budgets for the management of budgets and schedules including schedules of loss and management of costs.
These can be extended/managed using the global finance feature framework. |
Solution Workflows
The following table lists some of the pre-configured starter workflows available in the Remediation Accelerator. These can then be extended to meet your needs – see the following article to understand workflow automation in ShareDo.
| Workflow | Description |
|---|---|
| Instruction – Bulk Uploads | Workflow designed to automate the STP of Case creation from the bulk upload of instructions via Excel or CSV. |
| Instruction – Duplicate Check | Automated duplicate checking of instructions. |
| Instruction – Eligibility Check | Workflow responsible for the assessment of applicant eligibility based on client specific variables or other intelligence. |
| On Hold | Workflow to manage the On Hold process, including capturing specific data items and pausing remediation investigation and LBA/LoC processes for the specified periods. |
| Pre-Action: RFI | Workflow to manage the ‘Request for Information’ stage of remediation, including assessment, request, review and key decisions. |
| Pre-Action: Legal Case Assessment | Workflow to manage the ‘Legal Case Assessment’ stage of remediation, including technical (principal redress, vulnerability/complexity) and consequence loss analysis, LBA, LoC, Liability and Pre-Action Settlement Negotiations. |
| Settlement | Workflow to manage both pre-action and post-action settlement including judgment, settlement payment and costs (e.g., recovery). |
| Pre-Issue – Litigation Setup and Checklist | Review of the Matter pre-litigation, including seeking the appropriate authority and verifying data prior to submission via specific court forms (e.g., N1 or SDT). |