Of course, not all people with a mental health condition are vulnerable and not all vulnerable people have a mental health condition. Vulnerability is already a big concern in finance, though, and banks are already looking at this — I have been involved in two reports by the Personal Finance Research Centre into vulnerability and banking (on debt and on credit provision), both free to download and both with interesting references as well as figures.

The real question for me is about preserving as much autonomy as possible, exactly as you say. One area where people are really looking hard at that is fintech — see the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute’s Fintech for Good report (there’s also a great YouTube discussion from the report launch). MMHPI also run hackathons for companies working on exactly these questions (they’ve also done great work on other vulnerability issues such as subscription services that require a lot of work for people to cancel). I have been pressing for more involvement of people who actually have these conditions (and have been involved a little in that capacity because I think they figure it shuts me up a little if they let me in) but there is a genuine concern about, as they put it, “the drive to frictionless transactions” — banks are making it easier and easier to spend money, and we must protect autonomy because that’s the most valuable thing we have and the thing we are most often denied but sometimes we need a mechanism that will put just the right amount of breaks on so as to make it easier to avoid actions we’ll regret later.