A recent report from the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute has revealed what many people with mental health problems already knew – mental illess can have a significant, and often terrifying, impact on your finances.
Anxious? Good luck tackling the bank statements piling up, unopened. Having a manic episode? Time to spend thousands of pounds on things you’ll never use! Depressed? … What was my pin again?
Banks, the report argued, are simply not doing enough to protect people in this position. Many of the options available to other vulnerable people are simply not offered to those with mental health issues. People with visual or hearing impairments, for example, have a wider range of communication options – these could also benefit those with anxiety. Adults with conditions like Down’s syndrome are sometimes offered “third party mandate” accounts, and even corporate or high net worth accounts have options to set spending limits or delegate permissions to named individuals – functionalities that could be advantageous to many others.
The British Bankers’ Association has agreed that the financial industry should “raise its standards” with regards to mental health. But until then, what can people do to protect themselves financially?
Zander Brade, designer at banking start-up Monzo, thinks tech might be the answer.
In a blog posted last week, Brade detailed how his team has been working on making Monzo a “powerful and helpful financial service for people suffering from mental health problems”. And to do so, they’ve made a seemingly counterintuitive move: increasing friction in their app.
Brade describes the decision as “tough for a product person”, but hopes that providing “safety barriers” will protect vulnerable users and prevent them from experiencing serious distress around spending and debt.
“It makes sense that every tech product aims to be as fluid in its user experience as possible – minimising friction tends to help maximise profits,” he told me. But he explained: “In Monzo’s case, because money and the shape of one’s bank account is so closely attached to each customer’s state of mind, adding in layers of functionality to help protect them from potential spending crises will hopefully be anything but counterproductive.”
Polly Mackenzie, director of the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute, agrees that preventing people getting into financial difficulties could be key. “Over the past 10 years or so, the processes for helping people with mental health problems who are in serious debt have improved,” she told me. “What’s missing is work to try and help people with mental health problems from getting into financial difficulty in the first place: making sure people get the support they need with day to day financial management, that they don’t take on debts they can’t afford, and can get help from friends and family to stay on top of things.”
Mackenzie also highlights the benefit of “more friction” options – she mentions Monzo’s plans alongside work by fintech company Squirrel, who “make you wait a day before you can access your savings”.
“We desperately need tools like this to come into the market right now, because the overwhelming trend is towards less friction in transactions,” she said. She points towards plans by Facebook Messenger to allow in-app purchases and Amazon’s ‘instant credit’ on large purchases.
“There’s growing evidence that people think about contactless transactions less that they would if paying in cash or with their pin,” she says. “Unless we see banks and fintech companies develop ‘more friction’ options to go alongside this trend, we risk entering a slippery world where we all make a lot more financial mistakes, particularly if we have mental health problems.” Additional friction here can also be beneficial for those who aren’t experiencing poor mental health, who simply want to manage their budgets or better grasp what they’re spending.
Monzo is currently working on a series of workshops with groups of people suffering from a range of different mental health conditions so its development teams can “understand what they would need and like to see to make the product as useful and reassuring for them as can be”.
One example Brade uses is overspending in people with bipolar disorder, which often occurs late at night during a manic episode. Implementing “a method of double checking with the user the next day” could provide a safety net for people regretting their purchases in the morning. He also highlights “instant notifications on your spending, a real time view of your balance and transactions and in-app budgeting” as potentially supportive features.
He also hopes that opt-in features can be designed for “more specific use cases for particular conditions”.
“For the example of bipolar sufferers who have trouble with spending in manic episodes, the goal is to add a layer of confirmation and protection. It’s a powerful feature but a more unique functionality. That might not be required by every single user, and it would make more sense to be an option.”
Both Mackenzie and Brade are optimistic about the potential that technological solutions could have on people suffering from mental health problems.
“Designing Monzo with our most vulnerable customers at the forefront of our minds is a crucial part of the product development process,” Brade said. “Just by the very virtue of our world becoming more and more digital – I think that tech will become more crucial in providing solutions for vulnerable customers.”
Mackenzie is slightly more cautious. “It will never be the only answer,” she says. “But so long as we don’t deceive ourselves into thinking that it’s the answer to every problem, technology offers huge opportunities to transform our mental health and financial wellbeing.”
Can tech make banking better for those with mental health issues?
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