Mental Health Awareness Week: Why kindness matters for the future of banking
“We must not make the same mistakes after this pandemic.”
That’s the rallying cry behind this year’s Mental Health Awareness Week. The theme of kindness — its power in the past and its potential for the future — perhaps could not be more timely.
COVID-19 is unravelling the world as we know it in more ways than one. Parts of the economy have come to a halt, people have lost sources of income, and many cannot make ends meet without government assistance. Financial vulnerability has increased, and with that, visibility of the ways our financial system falls short.
As we think about the kind of society we want to build on the other side of this pandemic, now is a good time to think about the kinds of systems we want to build, too.
The need for an inclusive banking system is now more critical than ever, and kindness is key to realising it.
Kindness, money and mental health
When struggling with our mental health, financial admin may not come as easy as it might when we’re in a healthy state of mind.
Feeling overwhelmed or fatigued might result in avoidance of opening letters, which could mean that bills end up paid late or unpaid altogether. Or we might be tempted to spend more than we can afford as a way of coping with our circumstances.
Sometimes it’s the other way around. When funds are low, our mood can follow suit. The stress of unemployment or living paycheck-to-paycheck, for example, can take a negative toll on our wellbeing.
In times like these, kindness goes a long way. Toucan’s own research has shown that just a quick chat with a loved one can make all the difference in someone’s mood and relieve some of the burdens around managing finances.
At Toucan, we believe empowering people to support their loved ones using technology is one way we can chip at the boulder of financial vulnerability.
Barriers to timely money management support
Hard times are made harder when people feel like they’re alone. It doesn’t help that there are systemic hurdles in the way of accessing timely support.
Before the pandemic, the only legitimate way of delegating access to finances was by setting up a Power of Attorney. It’s worked for some people, but for the many who didn’t want as drastic an agreement, risky workarounds such as sharing PIN and card details seemed the easier route.
In a world of social distancing and self-isolation, people are now having to be more creative with how they give and receive support. Carers, for example, are having to consider how they can collect pensions on behalf of the person they care for or ensure their bills are paid on time — from a distance.
At Toucan, we don’t think it has to be this complicated. We believe that granting third party access to trusted friends and family carers can empower people who need extra support managing their money whether due to mental health problems or social distancing implications. And we’ve built and tested an app to prove it.
Support with managing money? There’s an app for that
Toucan is an app that uses open banking to help people get the timely money support they need from someone they trust. We’ve made waves in the six months since the app launched, and it’s been featured in Forbes and Which?.
Once the app is connected to a bank account, users can set up alerts around their spending that they can share with a trusted person. When triggered, the alerts get sent to both the user and their trusted family member or friend, opening up a friendly, supportive conversation about money and mental health.
The app was tested by people with lived experience of mental health difficulties in a study working with the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute last year. Toucan users found that the app helped them to have better conversations about money with the people around them. Those conversations led to practical money management strategies, better financial habits, and less anxiety around finances.
One of our users, ‘Sarah’, who’d been previously diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, Depression and Agoraphobia, felt that the app “broke down a lot of anxiety and shame.”
A year on, some users are even finding the alerts useful during COVID-19, which helps them to stay mindful of their spending patterns and avoid shopping as a coping mechanism.
The next version of our app will provide more tools for family members and carers to better support their loved ones.
So, what does kindness look like in finance?
Building financial products and services with empathy means that we listen, understand and prioritise the needs of the most vulnerable. In short, kindness is at the heart of financial inclusion.
We’re seeing some progress during the pandemic. Priority helplines and support for vulnerable customers have been developed. As supermarkets adapt existing gift card technologies, some banks have begun providing spare cards for carers to spend on someone’s behalf.
The sector is racing to come up with solutions, which is good. Yet this points to a broader pattern of delaying until there is no choice. For example, there has been talk about carer cards for years, but only now are we seeing banks attempt to bring that to life.
We owe it to people in vulnerable situations to ensure that their needs are met not just ‘for now’, but for life on the other side of this pandemic.
We’re passionate about what we do at Toucan, but we know we can’t do it alone. We need all hands to the plough to ensure that no one slips through the cracks and gets left behind. We want to see more products and services aimed at helping people in these situations long after COVID-19.
A system for the future, for everyone
Moments of crisis have a way of making obvious things that we routinely neglect. They make us reassess what is and isn’t working, what really matters, and where our priorities ought to lie.
It shouldn’t have taken a pandemic for us to treat building a financial landscape that works for everyone with urgency. Yet here we are. We’ve been given a rare opportunity to build a better, kinder way of banking.
Let’s not make the same mistakes.
Find out more about Toucan’s work on our website by downloading our research report.
