Building products that give Power (of Attorney) to the people
The following is a write-up of thoughts by Lilian Tula, our resident Head of Design at Toucan, in response to a paper and panel by the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute on Power of Attorney, and how it should be reformed to help people with fluctuating mental health difficulties.
Does anyone remember those silly Kinder Bueno adverts about ‘adulting’?
Essentially, ‘adulting’ is any admin task you might associate with being an adult — paying your bills on time, finding cheaper broadband, not burning a pan of pasta. It’s a word usually paired with frothing-at-the-mouth rants about useless millennials, so as a useless millennial myself I found the ads endearing.
A large portion of adulting is getting a handle on your finances. Managing money is an important part of growing up, and the idea of someone else handling it can feel like a step backwards.
This is part of the problem and stigma when it comes to asking for money help. Throw in mental health lapses, and things become even murkier as the options are to use unsafe workarounds like sharing sensitive details, or do nothing and hope things miraculously work out.
At this point, the safest option that comes close is handing over Power of Attorney, which is a laborious process that ends with empowering someone to make all decisions on your behalf, or a handful of similar options like appointeeship.
It’s all or nothing, which leaves a lot of middle ground for exploration.
Here’s what I reckon banking and FinTech products can start to think about when it comes to Power of Attorney and their customers.
Pay attention to workarounds
We often tell off customers for sharing passwords and accounts, but sometimes it’s a necessary evil to make sure things tick over in an emergency. Spotting workarounds is valuable in case of fraud and exploitation, but also good for picking out cases where it’s helping in unexpected ways.
“When we had the prepaid card scheme, it wasn’t that uncommon to find out that somebody who said the account was theirs wasn’t actually theirs. They were giving it to somebody else […] so they could spot if something was going to go wrong really quickly and freeze the card.”
– Stuart McFadden, Head of Financial Difficulties at Monzo
As much as lack of guidance on limited access makes solutions like this look risky, particularly from a safeguarding perspective, it’s important to explore these workarounds and ask if they can be made safer for general use.
Don’t dismiss vulnerability as an edge case
The stats by the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute show an increasing appetite for different levels of access, and what’s also telling is how applications for Power of Attorney are actually growing, despite it being a 20 page paper document that costs over £80 to file.
It’s likely this’ll keep rising, as applications for Power of Attorney will be digitised by 2025, pushing the cost of this fee-driven service down and making it more accessible.
“There are around 750,000 Power of Attorney’s in the UK, with it rapidly rising as much as 20–30% year on year.”
– Jan Sensier, Deputy Director of Strategy and Corporate Services at Office of the Public Guardian
Make autonomous, interpersonal sharing easier
When it comes to money, it’s natural to get a second opinion and share responsibility, but you wouldn’t expect to give someone Power of Attorney when all you want is to grant limited temporary access for added support, and revoke it at will.
Monzo already makes it easy for joint account holders to disconnect from a partner. The Office of the Public Guardian is currently trialling an alpha for sharing Power of Attorney documents using a link. At Toucan, we’re trialling text messages that have no financial data whatsoever that simply ask a friend to check-in and see if everything’s OK. Situations can change, and we need to be flexible in how customers choose to share their data.
Build a good experience on all fronts
Create awesome customer service
Lack of formal frameworks around flexible Powers of Attorney can be a bit of a safeguarding minefield, making it seem risky and costly. However, with it becoming more accessible, it’s going to become necessary to meet these flexible requirements, including training frontline staff.
In these cases, it might be good to look at how this has been rolled out elsewhere. Some examples that came up included how decision making delegation has been done in Victoria, Australia and some parts of Canada, as well as how supported decision making has been done in Peru.
“[I support the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute’s] recommendation about firms taking immediate action to improve staff training, because you can have all the guidance issued by regulators and by other bodies that you want, and all done for absolutely the right reasons and the right spirit. But […] it can come unstuck very quickly.”
– Nicky Morgan MP, Chair of the Treasury Select Committee
Give attorneys breathing space
Whilst Power of Attorney can be beneficial, it can also be a little messy. Fortunately there seems to be few cases of wilful malice enacted by an attorney, as the more common scenario is family falling out over big decisions. Unsurprisingly, it can be a lot of stress to take on all of someone’s adulting decisions.
“Last year, we investigated over 2000 cases of which about 25% went to court […] we also find a significant number of our investigations are because of family fall out.”
– Jan Sensier, Deputy Director of Strategy and Corporate Services at Office of the Public Guardian
It’s hard enough to feel like we’re making the absolutely best decisions for ourselves in tough situations, and it’s easy to see how attorneys might feel doubly pressured. Giving guidance on how to build these skills could make a world of difference.
“People that took up mediation found that [it] improved relationships in their family, which put the focus back on caring, and supporting the individual.”
– Jan Sensier, Deputy Director of Strategy and Corporate Services at Office of the Public Guardian
Empower the customer
Getting back to adulting for many people is an important part of recovery and reclaiming their life, and products should help them feel empowered every step of that journey.
Power of Attorney is just one of many tools, and there are nuances between when someone wants decisions made on their behalf in times of crisis, and when they want someone to double-check and support their decisions in times of recovery or minor lapses.
“Regaining control of your finances is part of that recovery. And I think it really enables people to feel a sense of independence and strength if they can do that in a supportive fashion.”
– Leah Milner, Financial Journalist, on her personal experience with bipolar
Have empathy, and smash the stigma
In product design we talk a lot about having empathy for the user, and the reality is that none of the suggestions above will resonate if as businesses, practitioners, and individuals we don’t develop a sense of empathy surrounding the challenges of mental illness — something as many as one in two of us will experience during our lifetime.
Power of Attorney is currently not something many people think about, even in moments when they could really benefit from it. As little as 3% of people who have experienced a mental health problem have used Power of Attorney, and it’s likely those who rejected the idea did so because they felt like they’d lose a sense of their personhood.
None of us can predict the future, and Power of Attorney would benefit anyone and everyone in case of an accident or crisis that temporarily leaves them unable to adult. After all, helping each other out is an intrinsic part of the human experience, and our products should be enablers of that.
