  Vulnerable individuals have a limited ability to make reasonable financial
decisions and choices and, thus, the level of care that is appropriate to be
provided to them by financial institutions may be different from that required
for other consumers. Therefore, identifying vulnerability is of central
importance for the design and effective provision of financial services and
products. However, validating the information that customers share and
respecting their privacy are both particularly important in finance and this
poses a challenge for identifying and caring for vulnerable populations. This
position paper examines the potential of the combination of two emerging
technologies, Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) and Verifiable Credentials
(VCs), for the identification of vulnerable consumers in finance in an
efficient and privacy-preserving manner.
