Ms Derville Rowland:

I want to differentiate between two things. It is our understanding that very many industries, including financial services, have charged different prices for a very long time. That is long-established, it is a matter many competition regulators look at and it is something that our competition regulator is also looking at. With regard to price differentiation or dual pricing with respect to consumer attitudes in the UK, the UK competition regulator has been looking at that, as well as the FCA, which also has a competition mandate. We are looking at it from the perspective of a consumer protection mandate. However, price optimisation and big data is a more recent innovation and level of sophistication with respect to that phenomenon. The idea of personal pricing, arising from information on people's behaviours on the Internet, for example, when they click the box saying they are okay with their information being shared, has brought about far more sophistication and ability of the firms to slice data in a different way. Some of that innovation can be to the advantage of customers because it may be that we can get personalised pricing to our advantage, but it could be that techniques could be deployed in a way that is changing over time. That needs to be looked at to see what, if any, impacts there are on customers and what, if anything, should be done about that.