MorganAsh enhances MARS digital customer vulnerability tool to manage multiple vulnerabilities

MorganAsh, the leading support services provider to the financial services and utilities sector, has added a major upgrade to the algorithms behind the MorganAsh Resilience System (MARS) to better record, measure and support clients with multiple vulnerabilities.

The new update enables users of the MARS digital vulnerability platform to not only identify, but better manage these multiple characteristics and life events, all while still generating a single, objective Resilience Rating – which is similar to a credit score, but for vulnerability.

It comes as research by the FCA highlights the compounding effects of multiple vulnerabilities and how this needs to be considered by firms. Consumers with multiple vulnerabilities often suffer disproportionately more than those with just single issues, be they financial, health or lifestyle. But most approaches to managing customer vulnerability fail to manage this – and simply apply a single support need to meet one – or each – specific vulnerability.

While this is relatively easy to do when speaking directly to a consumer, it is much harder to accomplish as part of a digital journey. Not only is it now possible through MARS, it is possible to scale and represent this management information, which is needed to analyse the impact of vulnerability on outcomes in order to meet Consumer Duty.

One of the key challenges is to understand the compounding effects of issues, and when they have an impact to a consumer. MARS uses a categorisation hierarchy, which itemises each individual circumstance; these are collated into categories of health, wealth, lifestyle, financial capability, engagement capability and support network.

These in turn are summated to a single Resilience Rating. Each circumstance is itself given a severity weighting, to reflect the impact on the consumer. Support needs can be triggered from the individual circumstance – for example,  hearing loss would trigger a different communications method. While a mild health issue may not trigger any support need, the combination of mild health issues, and a life event such as divorce, will affect the total Resilience Rating – which in turn may trigger an intervention, when the individual circumstance did not. This far better reflects reality.

MARS also accommodates the practical reality that a lot of financial planning for mortgages, savings and retirement is undertaken on a family basis, so MARS calculates the resilience of the family group to better reflect reality – and to reduce triggering support needs, when they support is already catered for by family members.

Andrew Gething, managing director of MorganAsh, said: “We know from our own work looking after ill people, that having multiple issues has a compounding effect, and while humans are great at recognising this on an individual basis, it is challenging to replicate digitally. The MARS development team has worked incredibly hard to model our algorithms to match reality, over many months, back-testing against real data. I am delighted this has now come to fruition – and is being released for our customers, to further improve customer vulnerability management without increasing costs.”

Chris Markland, compliance manager at Guarantor My Loan & Share My Loan, said: “Having the ability to not only identify vulnerabilities, but to also truly recognise and understand the impact that multiple issues may have on our customers is a great feature and its value cannot be overstated. With MARS triggering targeted support treatments, our teams have never been better equipped to provide dedicated, individual support channels to our customers. We can’t wait to incorporate these new features into our processes.”

Carolyn Delehanty, Vulnerability & Inclusive Design Consultant at Delehanty Consulting, said: “The FCA has been clear that firms must move beyond ‘tick-box’ approaches to vulnerability. The reality is that people rarely experience a single, isolated issue – challenges overlap and compound each other. Being able to record this gives firms the ability to reflect real human experience in their data, and to make better decisions that lead to fairer outcomes. This is exactly the kind of practical innovation we need to see to turn Consumer Duty from a regulatory requirement into a genuine driver of inclusion.”

MorganAsh is a specialist in Consumer Duty and customer vulnerability. The firm launched its award-winning MARS platform to help firms understand and monitor vulnerable customers and deliver good outcomes – as required by Consumer Duty. It is in use across financial services and the utilities sector, enabling businesses to adopt a consistent approach to identifying vulnerable characteristics and generate an objective Resilience Rating – much like a credit score.