“I am not saying we are better placed than advisers or anyone else to provide help and advisers do a huge amount of work in their communities to get people thinking about their finances. But companies like Standard Life have a natural reach through their policyholders.
“Others with a natural reach should be doing what they can and the industry as a whole should be supportive of that. My focus is not those who receive financial advice but those who can’t because typically they will be the most vulnerable,” added Curran.
Curran said vulnerability can manifest itself in all different shapes and sizes and people from different sectors have different perspectives and experiences of it and having collaboration between government, businesses and the third sector will help to tackle it.
He said: “First you need to understand the problem then you need to understand the problem is not a single issue and it can emerge in different ways. Then we need to have that coalition of the willing and determined across the sectors to do something about it.
“It’s about bringing people together who can make a difference because it is easy to give up, it is a big problem, and no single institution is going to solve it.”
alina.khan@ft.com
