Vulnerability is subjective, and different life events and health-related matters affect everybody in different ways – and at different times. Assessing somebody’s financial wellbeing can be fairly scientific, but non-financial vulnerability is more difficult to validate – and it would never be possible to authenticate each declaration.
The Vulnerability Registration Service does not question an individual registration on our database, however the data is validated in other ways and, as the database grows, the valid credibility of the data is reinforced:
- Where an individual is registered by a third party because a Power of Attorney is in place, VRS validates the Power of Attorney with the Office of the Public Guardian.
- An individual may be registered through more than one source e.g. they may notify VRS directly of their vulnerabilities, and this may be separately confirmed by other registrations from their service providers. Any one individual may have multiple registrations recorded by different providers.
- We source data from third parties – VRS clients act as a conduit to register their customers and their interaction with that customer acts as an additional source of validation.
- A large proportion of VRS data is provided by organisations which have authority to act on someone else’s behalf. This is often because the individual lacks ‘mental capacity’ to manage their own affairs, and a Court of Protection Order, Appointeeship or Deputyship may be in place. This, in itself, is validation of the registration. These registrations are usually passed to VRS by local authorities, solicitors or money management companies.
- Individuals are often referred to VRS by charities who work in partnership with us – these include organisations which help individuals who are victims of economic abuse or loan sharks. The fact that the individual is being supported by these organisations also adds an added dimension of trust in the value of VRS data.
