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In Focus Consumer Credit


VRS: help to fulfill your vulnerability obligations


We all know that we need to treat vulnerable people in an appropriate way, the Vulnerability Registration Service can help the industry achieve this


Mark Bryant Director, Vulnerability Registration Service mark@vregservice.co.uk


We all know that we need to treat vulnerable people in an appropriate way, we know that we have a corporate responsibility to do so. We also know that the regulators expect us to take the right approach. The challenge is often how to identify exactly who is vulnerable. The Vulnerability Registration


Service holds a database of people who are vulnerable and a user of the VRS can search the database anywhere in their waterfall of onboarding or ongoing service offerings. There are no barriers in the way


to stop any organisations checking against the VRS.


Pandemic The pandemic has plunged many more people into vulnerable situations completely


unexpectedly. It has also exacerbated the difficult circumstances people were already in.


It has put another complexion on the


nature of vulnerability – that may be increasing reliance on digital communication, furlough, redundancy, reduced pay, reliance on others, and the need to isolate. Vulnerability touches all aspects of our


lives whether that be rental or mortgage, health, insurance, banking, utilities, or our mobile phones. All of these are now essential to our everyday lives and difficult personal situations can impact upon all of them. One area guaranteed to compound these


difficulties is the knowledge that we are in debt and that we are being targeted to repay that debt, so it is crucial that the handling of this is managed as sensitively and case- appropriately as possible.


We hold Court of Protection Orders sourced from local authorities – these orders are recorded where there is a mental capacity issue, and their finances are not being managed directly by themselves. The information is wholly relevant to companies who may have a relationship with these individuals


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Repeating circumstances One of the main problems that people cite, when they are facing difficulties, is the need to repeat their circumstances, highlighting the fact that they are in a vulnerable situation again and again. VRS is designed to alert companies to


vulnerability, minimising that the need for people to repeat themselves and possibly having to navigate their way through call centres or websites in order to speak to the right people. Most organisations have specialist teams


that deal with vulnerability and the quicker these specialist teams know about the vulnerability the quicker they can help the


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vulnerable consumer and help improve the consumers outcome.


Completely free Registering information with VRS is completely free and so it gives the opportunity to help protect your customers when they are dealing with other companies. If a customer is in a vulnerable position,


where the right authority is given, companies can work with them to get them added to the VRS database and therefore alert other organisations to their situation. VRS gives people the opportunity to


provide more detail about their vulnerability through a flag system. The detail is provided consensually and


shows where people are affected by severe financial difficulty, physical disability, mental capacity, lifestyle events such as bereavement or divorce. We also show where people have accessibility issues, such as access to the internet. We have introduced a flag so that people can highlight when they have been directly impacted by the pandemic. People can self-register on the VRS and


companies can work with them to register or, where a Power of Attorney is in place, somebody can register on their behalf. We hold Court of Protection Orders


sourced from local authorities – these orders are recorded where there is a mental capacity issue, and their finances are not being managed directly by themselves. The information is wholly relevant to companies who may have a relationship with these individuals.


January 2021


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