The flag is being turned on to help brokers get used to what areas to look out for six weeks ahead of the introduction of new consumer duty rules on 31st July.

It aims to help brokers to identify borrower vulnerability early and highlight whether extra care must be taken towards clients, such as asking further questions and taking additional measures ahead of time.

The flag will provide documented proof of compliance to the regulator, highlighting consideration of a consumer duty issue when making lender recommendations.

It will also help lenders using Knowledge Bank’s internal criteria system — KB Pro — by underlining which areas of their criteria are affected by consumer duty.

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This will be available to lenders’ internal sales teams, underwriters, branch staff and BDMs from next week.

Nicola Firth, CEO at Knowledge Bank (pictured above), said: “Consumer duty will be a significant sea change for both brokers and lenders [and] the level of care needed when advising clients is definitely increasing a notch.”

“Identifying instances of vulnerability is far more complex than many of us may realise, given the transient nature of vulnerability at various stages and events in people’s lives.

“The Knowledge Bank flag will help brokers to be aware of when they need to put additional measures in place at the very beginning of the advice process, protecting both them and their more vulnerable clients and helping brokers evidence that they have done so [by] giving them the ability to save it to their compliance file.”