Two years on, the email still makes me cry. Whenever I read it, I’m taken back to when the message popped up in my inbox, working from home on a dull lockdown afternoon. It was from a terminally ill woman. She had just weeks to live, yet here she was thanking our team for sorting out her compensation, meaning that, as she put it, “I can live my last few days in peace.”
When I first read the email, I got a real lump in my throat. It was only a year after my mum had died, and there was something about this woman’s predicament that really hit home. She was relatively young, only middle-aged. But her email also reminded me of the important work we do at the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS), which protects customers if their financial service provider goes out of business, and how we can make a palpable difference to people’s lives.
We often get distressed customers contacting us, whether it’s couples who received bad advice and ended up losing all their retirement income or pensioners whose financial firm has gone bust.
These people are usually at the end of the road; they’ve got nowhere else to go. They’ve been turned down by the people who gave them advice and the Financial Ombudsman Service; sometimes they come to us having been out-of-pocket for up to three years.
However, to tell somebody that they’re eligible for compensation, or they can claim back £85,000 of the £100,000 they’ve lost, or they can get their pension money back and won’t need to continue working until they’re 75, is an unbeatable feeling.
It all started five days before I received the thank-you email. The woman had rung our customer service team telling us that she only had a few weeks left to live and wanted to get her claim settled before she passed. She was particularly worried about her husband who found dealing with paperwork and financial affairs difficult. How would he cope if a decision on her claim wasn’t made before she passed?
Time was of the essence here. We deal with dozens of claims every month, but this one was more urgent. Throughout my career, I’ve always said: “It’s not a claim. Imagine if that was your nan or your mum.” With every customer, there’s usually a story behind it. Unfortunately, this story is often sad.
So, we prioritised this woman’s claim.
We usually send out the settlement by cheque, the cashing of which confirms that the customer consents to our terms and conditions. Her husband didn’t want to leave her side and was therefore unable to pay in the cheque to complete the claim, so we worked out a way for her to sign a declaration of consent so we could pay the compensation directly into her bank.
This expedited process was one of the things the woman thanked us for in her email. Before coming to us, she’d been dealing with the endless admin of pension companies and banks, in addition to hospitals – all at a time when she should have been spending those precious moments with her family. She was so grateful we’d managed to get her financial affairs in order in just a few days.
We don’t usually push customers to the front of the queue at the FSCS, but I don’t regret a single thing about speeding up this woman’s case. Sometimes we need to pull all the stops out. We did it again when we helped an elderly man during the pandemic who couldn’t visit his wife in a care home for her to sign some documents. In both cases, it was the right thing to do.
The team spirit is all part of the stellar work culture we have at the FSCS, where I’ve worked since 2015. It’s a cliche but we’re like a family. Like any family, when times are tough we all pull together. It’s a place where you can absolutely be yourself and still progress.
Dealing with vulnerable customers who are at their financial wits’ end isn’t easy though: sometimes they tell us they’re considering suicide – a number of our staff have been trained by the Samaritans to speak with these customers, for example how to recognise the importance of tone, empathy and warmth in dealing with those in distress. We will never walk past a problem.
The key to doing the job well is listening. Many customers just want to tell their story. If you really listen to them, it can help you come to a decision about the claim and explain it to them in a way they understand.
I never met the woman who sent the email. I don’t even know what she looked like. It might seem weird to say that an email from someone in distress put a spring in my step on that lockdown afternoon. But knowing that we removed a huge stress during the last few weeks of her life is a nice feeling. I hope her husband is doing well.
Do you want to make a difference and join a diverse and inclusive organisation? Please visit the FSCS careers website
In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is at 988 or chat for support. You can also text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis text line counsellor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
