I think it is vitally important to remember that customers are someone’s mum or dad or close family member, and they could just as easily be your mum or dad.
You would want them to be treated with understanding and sympathy, not misled or upset.
Dealing with financial matters can be difficult at the best of times, but can be terribly hard when you are in a vulnerable state, such as when a parent dies.
One thing clear from the research is that when vulnerable people approach financial companies, they hope for a positive and helpful response.
When they do not get that, their situation – whether financial or mental – is likely to be made worse.
That happened to ‘John’, age 71, who lived with his dad after a failed marriage and a partner who died of cancer. When his dad died he popped to the bank to sort things out.
At first he was virtually accused of being a criminal because there were withdrawals from his dad’s account after the date of his death.
They had in fact been payments his dad had made a couple of days before his death that had only shown up on the account afterwards.
But you can imagine how that made John feel: confused and upset, I would imagine. He was then sent away to find his mum’s death certificate because her name was still on the account, but when he returned to the bank a few days later there had been a few more payments, so that it was now £700 in the red.
He was then falsely told that he would have to repay the money, upsetting and worrying him even more.
The complete lack of empathy and understanding is appalling.
The FCA has set out a marker that it will “step in” if it discovers financial companies are not treating vulnerable people fairly. But that does not just mean not ripping them off, it means making greater efforts to help them because of their situation.
During the coronavirus crisis, many more people have become vulnerable, which means everyone in financial services must make greater efforts to understand and help.
Simon Read is a freelance journalist
