MorganAsh has upgraded its MorganAsh Resilience System (MARS) to help firms record and manage customers with multiple vulnerabilities.
The firm said the update improves how the MARS digital platform tracks and deals with overlapping issues such as health, wealth, lifestyle, and financial capability, still producing a single resilience rating for each person, similar to a credit score.
Recent research by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) found that people with more than one vulnerability were often hit harder than those with only one, but most firms still only address single issues.
MARS now allows digital management of these multiple factors, making it easier for firms to analyse the impact of vulnerability and meet Consumer Duty requirements.
The system uses a hierarchy that lists each individual situation, grouping them under categories like health or financial capability.
Each is given a severity score, which affects an overall resilience rating.
This means someone with mild health issues and a recent divorce might need support even if neither issue alone would have triggered help.
MARS can also assess the resilience of whole families, reflecting the fact that financial planning often happens at a family level.
This helps reduce unnecessary support triggers when family members are already helping.
Andrew Gething (pictured), 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.”
