Metro Bank has launched online hubs for brokers working with vulnerable clients, and customers going through difficulties.  

The challenger bank has created a vulnerable customer page on its intermediary website to help brokers understand how to identify a vulnerable customer.   

It has also uploaded a mortgage payment support page for customers who are worried about their finances.  

The lender adds that brokers can make it aware of potentially vulnerable borrowers by including this information in their application notes.   

It adds: “Metro Bank will then call the customer directly to discuss ways they can support and manage any concerns.”  

The move follows the Financial Conduct Authority’s Consumer Duty rules launch last month.    

The regulator’s new guidance applies to all of the UK’s 60,000 regulated financial firms, including the mortgage industry’s roughly 100 lenders and 18,000 brokers and broker firms.

It says the wide-ranging rules set out “higher and clearer standards of consumer protection across financial services”, and highlights the protection of vulnerable customers.  

Metro Bank director of mortgage distribution Charles Morley says: “No one is exempt from feeling the pressures of the cost of living, and we want to do what we can to help our customers.   

“Metro Bank prides itself on offering high-quality service and convenience and this extends to supporting customers through periods of financial vulnerability, or identifying when they may be at risk of becoming vulnerable.”