MorganAsh, provider of vulnerability assessment software for financial services, has added an enhancement to its resilience system to present vulnerability data for households and individuals.
The upgrade will better reflect vulnerabilities within families, with many financial decisions made for a family rather than for each individual separately.
Mortgages, joint life insurance, property insurance and retirement planning are all typically undertaken for family units.
The MorganAsh Resilience System (MARS) provides an objective method to measure consumer characteristics, generating a resilience rating – much like a credit score – and providing a combined rating for each family member and for the household. This may include children and reflect, for example, a disabled child and caring responsibilities – as well as the vulnerability characteristics of the parents.
If parents divorce or one party moves into care, for example, this is reflected in the combined resilience rating for the family, as well as the individual. There is also the ability to move individuals to different family groups and premises.
Andrew Gething (pictured), managing director of MorganAsh, said: “Many financial transactions are undertaken on a family basis and, often, family units compensate for the vulnerabilities of others. While an individual may well be resilient, they might also be caring for a disabled child or elderly relative; this can impact their own resilience and needs to be taken into account in any financial planning or servicing.
“This upgrade to MARS links this premises-level data with individual data so both can be used and compared. This is an important step in progressing towards data portability and the sharing of vulnerability data between firms. Understanding and being able to monitor at both an individual and a household level reflects the real world and is a powerful new addition to the MARS platform.”
Earlier this year, MorganAsh published its 10-point checklist to help financial services firms assess their processes for detecting vulnerabilities in clients.
It covers all customers and vulnerabilities, including provision for protected characteristics, such as age, gender and sexual orientation. It also assesses how well firms are responding to monitoring and reporting requirements laid out by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
Samantha Partington is a freelance trade and consumer journalist writing about property and personal finance. Previously she worked worked for the Daily Mail and Property Week. She is the former deputy editor of Mortgage Solutions and editor of Specialist Lending Solutions.
Before becoming a journalist, Samantha worked as a mortgage broker and latterly for a mortgage, bridging and secured loan lender. Samantha is CeMAP qualified. Follow her on Twitter @SamJPartington1.
