People with mental health issues forced to share their PIN – leaving them open to ‘abuse and fraud’

It’s the first rule of safe banking: never share your PIN code with anyone.

But our broken system forces people with mental health issues to do so, new research has warned – leaving them vulnerable to financial abuse and fraud.

According to new research published today by the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute, four in 10 people (42%) with mental health problems have wanted help with managing day-to-day finances from a trusted person, such as a friend or family member.

But it’s hard for them to do so safely – leaving around one in five (22%) with no option but to resort to “risky workarounds” like sharing bank details.

“I was mentally unwell. Had someone I thought I trusted try to help,” one participant told researchers. “Instead, I was coerced into giving them thousands of pounds thinking they were helping me.”

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The Money and Mental Health Policy Institute, which was founded by money expert Martin Lewis, is calling on banks to offer people with mental health issues safe, official channels to delegate purchases to a third party.

“People want to be responsible for their own money. Yet some struggling with mental health issues know there are times they can’t be responsible,” said Lewis, who is also the charity’s chair.

“So the responsible thing for them to do at those times is to get a trusted family member or friend to help. Yet when they try, often the cogs of the financial system seize up.”

People with mental health issues left with no choice but to share their PIN

Common symptoms of mental health problems such as reduced memory, increased impulsivity or low mood can make it extremely difficult to manage financial admin and bills, or to go out shopping for essentials.

Yet financial services firms do not consistently offer support tools for people suffering from these symptoms.

Of 18 leading current account providers in the UK, just seven provide a carers’ card, the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute’s market analysis study shows. This is a tool to allow carers to buy a person essentials such as groceries if they are too unwell to leave the house. 

Just three out of 18 allow for third party notifications, allowing a trusted person to receive alerts about a person’s account, with their permission. And only one bank allowed carers to have partial access to a mentally ill person’s account, blocking or limiting certain payments.

Support across the sector is piecemeal, Lewis warned.

“The tools needed just aren’t widely available,” explains Lewis. “The only recourse, often at a desperate time, is to break the rules, leaving them forced to shed the cloak of normal financial protections – putting them at risk of losing money, financial abuse, and worried about being disenfranchised from access to financial services. The technology is available, we just haven’t seen it used enough to help those with mental health issues.”

The other main way that people can share financial decisions is through formal tools such as Lasting Power of Attorney (Continuing Power of Attorney in Scotland). But this is a more permanent enacting of help designed more for mental capacity issues than mental health problems.  

Understandably, many survey respondents were reluctant to embrace this option. They raised concerns about Power of Attorney being too complex and difficult to set up, giving too much control over to a trusted person and not offering the right flexibility for someone with a fluctuating condition.

Faced with this lack of options, it’s no surprise that people end up sharing their PIN, said Helen Undy, chief executive of the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute.

“For many people with mental health problems, getting the support of a loved one to manage money is the difference between keeping their head above water financially or falling into serious money problems,” she said.

“It is unacceptable that people have to put themselves at risk of harm to get that support because banks aren’t providing the right tools to do this safely and easily.”

Money and Mental Health is calling on the government to coordinate a voluntary agreement among financial services to offer customers a better support package. This could be part of the upcoming Financial Inclusion Strategy, Lewis added.

“We’re calling on the government and regulator to convince firms to do this in a voluntary way, as they did with basic bank accounts. If not, then there should be a push to make it a regulatory mandate. Our banking sector is too big to fail, so it’s too big to be allowed to fail the most vulnerable,” he said.

“We need tools so that people can share money management more easily and without putting themselves or their carer in harm’s way.”

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