Are You a Business User?
Whether you are a business with products or services connected to a financial contract or a charity offering advice services, all organisations have a social, moral and regulatory responsibility to identify vulnerable consumers.
Many of you have invested in systems to help people at a particularly difficult and stressful time in their lives, but until now there has been no way to make sure their circumstances are known to other organisations to avoid that consumer going through a similarly distressing experience in repeating the cause of their vulnerability.
The Vulnerability Registration Service addresses this challenge by providing a platform for organisations using a cross sector single point of reference which complements your existing systems and enables you to share and see that a consumer has declared themselves vulnerable.
How does it work ?
The VRS is a private sector initiative funded entirely by its shareholders offering its members a reciprocal system to share data. The VRS provides Users with a Closed User Group (‘CUG’) environment whereby information provided by the consumer with their consent, or by a third party with a signed client authority or legal mandate to operate on the consumer’s behalf, for example a Power of Attorney, can be shared with other Users
on a strictly reciprocal basis.
To access the VRS, Users must also add any identified vulnerable consumers to the Register – we provide Users with a comprehensive compliance and practical User
Guide and User support and consultancy is available via support@the-vrs.com
The VRS does not make any decisions for Users, but provides a service to protect the consumer from further hardship at a time when they consider themselves to be in a vulnerable position, enabling an individual’s vulnerability issues to be handled sensitively and professionally.
The VRS can be used at point of application or when deciding on any customer engagement strategies from marketing to account management, arrears and collections. Problem debt can make it harder to recover from mental illness, and three times as many adults with mental health problems report debt or arrears, compared to those without mental health problems.
The VRS does not indicate why a consumer may be vulnerable nor does it process the information supplied other than for providing a platform for optional User interaction in the case of consumers that have identified themselves as being vulnerable.
The VRS uses a very straightforward proprietary set of vulnerability flags that signify the source of the Register entry – typically the consumer themselves, either directly with the VRS or through a User of the service, for example a lender. The VRS provides instant API access and data upload facilities.
We will work with Users on the most appropriate strategy for their particular circumstances.
How do I join?
We will discuss your business needs with you to determine the best form of connection to the system, which suits your business volumes.
Having established the appropriate link to our system and been provided with secure login codes, you will be ready to start loading and viewing data.
We charge a membership fee and a cost per search is applied appropriate to the number of annual searches.
