Banks make millions from the most vulnerable

As mentioned, I’m dealing with my mother’s financial affairs as she reaches end of life, and I’m finding it incredibly frustrating. The process is that there first needs to be a Power of Attorney in place. Luckily, she saw that coming and gave it to me. That’s a government portal which allows me to take over management of her financial affairs. What she didn’t give me is a list of her financial affairs, so I’m now on a forensic trail of trying to find out what’s where and how much.

It is not a good experience.

Every single financial provider wants a code from UKGov (UK Government website) to allow me to access her financial affairs. Even with that access, it means that each and every financial provider then wants me to upload authenticated identity documents – passport and driving licence. I go through them one by one, but then sit there and think that surely, if I have power of attorney approved by the UK government, shouldn’t every financial firm be informed and they proactively contact me through a single sign-on. Why should I find them? More than this, what happens to the ones I don’t find? They just keep the money?

This is a huge issue … and it’s getting bigger as we go digital.

In my mother’s case, she luckily kept a box of contracts for investments, so I’ve been contacting each and every firm to get the money under management. But what if we didn’t have that box? What if it was all digital? What if we didn’t have the reference numbers, codes and contacts?

In my case, as a financial professional, I can chase the trail and – hopefully – come to a conclusion but then I look at my brother who, tbh, is not as capable as me in terms of admin. How could he deal with this? How can the general population deal with their vulnerable relations’ finances?

This is something that never occurred to me until my mother lost her faculties, but then I have been very supportive of Project Nemo, a programme initiated by Joanne Dewar, former CEO of GPS. Nemo is there to support the vulnerable and, as this grows, you have to realise that the vulnerable are not just the elderly. They are anyone who has challenges with day-to-day life, but how can they live a better life if they are not supported.

That support includes financial support. How do you deal with money if you don’t understand what money is? How do you deal with money if no-one has told you about what money means? How do you deal with money if you have no idea what your username and password is?

The issues here are two-fold:

1. how do we ensure family can access financial affairs of those who can no longer manage them; and
2. for those who have financial needs, how do we ensure they are looked after if they have no idea what their financial needs are?

It is leading me to an idea to create a campaign to deal with this. The campaign focuses upon those who are vulnerable, whether through age or illness or ability. We need a governmental and financial system that looks after them simply and easily on our behalf. A simple example: if the government gives power of attorney to a family member, why don’t they automatically tell all financial firms that this change of status has happened? Why don’t they automatically ensure that all of those firms are given notice to provide access to account? Why don’t they automatically find every single firm that the individual has been dealing with or has funds with? Why is it that the individual family member has to contact each firm, one-by-one, and go through an onboarding process of proof of identity every single time?

My list of questions go on and on but, in the spirit of keeping things short: financial firms make gazillions from vulnerable ill, challenged,  dying and dead people. We need to change this and, to give credit where credit is due, some are.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2ZAHXph96I