What "vulnerability-first" actually means in practice.
Some customers are having a bad month. Some are in genuine financial distress. Some are dealing with illness, bereavement, family violence, or addiction. The job is to recognise which is which, early, and route each one to the right pathway without shaming them or losing the file.
Visible hardship pathway
A clearly-labelled 'need help?' option appears on message one, in every channel. SMS, email, portal, letter, so no customer has to ask for a door they didn't know existed.
Trained hardship desk
A specialised desk of collectors with extended training in financial counselling, family and domestic violence protocols, and mental health first aid, they handle every flagged file.
National Debt Helpline pathway
A warm-transfer referral pathway to the National Debt Helpline and state-based financial counsellors, with the file paused while external advice is received.
Family & domestic violence protocol
A tested FDV protocol with single-point contact, identifier suppression, and no-contact windows, built from the Economic Abuse Reference Group guidance.
Income-and-expenditure tool
A customer-facing I&E tool that's plain-English, not patronising, so a workable plan can be built in one conversation, not three.
Flags travel with the file
Vulnerability flags follow the customer across every team, channel, and interaction. They never have to explain themselves twice.
Six commitments we operate to, every file, every time.
These aren't aspirations. They're the operating standards our QA function scores against, and the thing a regulator or external auditor can hold us to.
No escalation without review
No file moves to a firmer collection stance without a flagged review of vulnerability markers. Ever.
No-contact windows respected
If a customer or their advocate asks for a no-contact window, it's honoured, across every channel, automatically, without manual intervention.
Plans that hold
Hardship arrangements are built to be sustainable, not optimistic. Better a plan that completes than one that breaks in two months.
Right to advocate
Every vulnerable customer has a right to an advocate, financial counsellor, family member, or legal representative. We make that right easy to exercise.
Clear disclosure
What a hardship arrangement means, what it will and won't affect, and what happens if it can't be maintained, all explained clearly, in plain English, up front.
Continuous improvement
Lived-experience consultation, external review, and financial counsellor feedback fed back into training and workflow each year.
Plausible ranges, not vanity numbers.
Every portfolio has a different vulnerability profile. These are the directional patterns we tend to see where vulnerable-customer care is the operating standard.
A hard conversation, handled with care.
Talk to our hardship lead. They'll walk you through the pathway from the customer's point of view, and show you where yours could sit alongside it.