Fintech's Compassionate Turn: How Tech is Easing the Burden of Grief

MANCHESTER, England – June 23, 2026

In a move that signals a significant shift in the financial services industry's approach to customer care, UK credit management firm Perch Group has partnered with the bereavement notification service NotifyNOW. The collaboration aims to tackle one of the most painful and overlooked administrative challenges: the bureaucratic nightmare faced by grieving families. By integrating a centralized digital platform, the company is automating a process that research shows nearly a quarter of people find “traumatic,” setting a new precedent for compassionate capitalism in an age of digital transformation.

When a person dies, the emotional toll on their family is often compounded by a daunting and repetitive administrative burden. Bereaved individuals must contact a multitude of private sector organizations—from banks and credit card companies to utilities and mobile phone providers—repeating the same distressing information over and over. This process is not just inefficient; it's a systemic failure that adds immense stress during a period of intense grief. Now, technology is being deployed not just for profit, but for providing a much-needed human touch.

The Digital Solution to an Analog Problem

The partnership allows families of deceased Perch Group customers to use NotifyNOW, a digital platform that can inform up to 1,600 companies with a single, secure submission. Instead of making dozens of phone calls, a family member can now follow a link on the company's website, upload the necessary details and a death certificate once, and let the technology handle the rest. This simple-sounding solution represents a profound change in how businesses manage end-of-life processes.

NotifyNOW is a service of Phillips & Cohen Associates (PCA), a firm specializing in compassionate engagement within the credit industry, and is owned by The Estate Registry, a company focused on automating estate management. This structure reveals a growing ecosystem of ‘death tech’ designed to streamline what has long been a fragmented and emotionally taxing journey.

Brian Greenhoff, Operations Director with the Perch Group, framed the move as a crucial enhancement. “Our new partnership with NotifyNOW significantly strengthens our bereavement offering by ensuring we receive timely, accurate notifications with compassion at the core of the process,” he said in the announcement. “This creates a better experience for families... enabling our teams to respond more sensitively and efficiently during what is already an incredibly difficult time.”

A New Industry Benchmark for Compassionate Finance

While compassionate language is common in corporate communications, Perch Group’s action puts operational weight behind the words. By adopting this technology, the firm is challenging a long-standing industry inertia and setting a new benchmark for bereavement care. The move is particularly notable coming from a credit management organization, a sector where customer interactions are often fraught with tension.

This initiative directly addresses the gap left by existing government services. The UK’s “Tell Us Once” service is widely praised for its efficiency in notifying public sector bodies like HMRC and the DVLA, but its mandate ends there. The vast private sector has been a wild west of disparate, and often difficult, notification procedures. This is the void that platforms like NotifyNOW, and its competitors, are now filling.

The market for these services is growing, indicating a widespread need. The Death Notification Service (DNS), backed by UK Finance, connects users with major banks and building societies. Other platforms like Settld and Life Ledger offer similar, free-to-consumer services, each boasting a network of over a thousand organizations. The emergence of this competitive landscape underscores a powerful trend: companies are realizing that a seamless, empathetic off-boarding process is a critical component of the customer lifecycle.

Nick Cherry, Divisional CEO at Phillips & Cohen Associates, hopes this is just the beginning. “We hope that other financial services firms will follow Perch Group’s lead to enhance bereavement care across the sector,” he stated. His comments point to a future where centralized bereavement notification could become a standard, rather than a novel, feature of customer service.

Beyond Bureaucracy: Addressing the Human Cost

The need for such reform is stark. A survey by the Bereavement Standard Campaign found that less than 18% of bereaved people found service providers “helpful” or “efficient.” The 2022 report from the UK Commission on Bereavement (UKCB) further highlighted these systemic failures, calling for the development of minimum standards for death administration to ensure fair and sensitive treatment. These platforms are the private sector’s answer to that call.

By streamlining notifications, companies like Perch Group not only provide relief to grieving families but also gain significant operational efficiencies. Receiving verified, timely information through a single channel reduces administrative overhead, minimizes errors, and allows customer service teams to focus on providing genuine support rather than processing repetitive data entry. This alignment of compassionate customer service with sound business logic is what makes the trend so powerful and likely to endure.

The adoption of NotifyNOW by firms like Perch Group, as well as others in retail and utilities such as The Very Group and Southern Water, demonstrates that this is not a niche issue. It is a universal challenge being met with a modern, scalable solution. As The Estate Registry continues to build out its suite of services aimed at simplifying estate management, it’s clear that technology is fundamentally reshaping the administrative and financial aftermath of death, transforming a process once defined by paper and pain into one guided by digital efficiency and empathy.