We spoke to Mark White, CEO about what inspired him to set up Reassura and how all of us are vulnerable to fraudsters and scammers but how the impact may differ across different age groups.
Tell us a bit about Reassura and what you do.
Reassura is a personal fraud/scam avoidance service. We help people stay informed and protected from the latest scams and provide UK based telephone fraud advisers for instant expert advice when they need it.
What inspired you to launch Reassura?
First-hand experience of the consequences of a scam on my wife’s 92-year-old grandmother. Simply put, she stopped answering the phone. The money was one thing but loss to her quality of life was shocking. When I started researching the subject, I then came across a horrific statistic from AgeUK, “If you are over 65 and are scammed in your own home then you are 2.5 times more likely to die or go into care in the next 12 months”.
I felt something had to be done.
What are some of the which you are leveraging technology to better protect people again fraud?
Our service is based on keeping people informed. Technology makes this easy. A website providing the UK’s largest library of guides, videos, true life stories etc which also allows people to sign-up is connected to our CRM system, which is linked to a VOIP telecom system. This means we push the right content to the right people, when those people call us, we know who they are and monitor anyone being particularly targeted. We have moved over to a digital membership card which sits in members phone wallet, this is cheaper and more effective than physical cards and means we can push notify members of all alerts.
Similarly, our fraud advisers are trained using our own online course with built in assessments. This results in us being able to offer fulfilling home working employment opportunities to people who in some cases can not work in a conventional office.
How do you keep pace with the fast-evolving world of fraudsters and scammers?
When we started it was all about staying on top of loads of news sources, particularly in the quite specialist areas such as cyber security. We still do loads of that but increasingly our members are the source of our information and the facts behind our Scam Alerts.
Why are some older people particularly vulnerable to fraud?
They’re not. That may sound controversial but fraud effects all age groups, BUT the effects of fraud on older people are more significant than they are for younger people. The financial consequences can be seen from an average loss last year to pension fraud of £91,000 versus what a younger person might suffer from social media fraud with an average loss of £1,250. However, it is the non-financial consequences which are the scariest as older people feel ashamed to talk about the crime, isolate themselves from technology, phones etc and suffer greatly reduced quality of life.
Meet Reassura at FinTECH4Life as part of our Informed Innovation Start up Showcase