I'm not sure what alternative you are proposing. This only gets much, much worse when the aging person is trying to use a password...
Or you get elected to high office and consequently getting to the branch is a bit ... faffy[0]
[0] https://chicago.suntimes.com/pope-leo-xiv/2026/05/06/pope-le...
So humble that he was able to change his information over the phone by threatening directly to the president of the bank that he'd use a different bank if they didn't let him, and the president bent over backwards to meet this demand. He's just like us!
There's a whole wide age and knowledge/competence where older people can still fall for scams (or can't know if it's legit or a scam) but on the other hand are still capable to go to whatever office/bank they need to go.
Every time someone calls to say there's a problem with your account, you ask for their name and/or extension number, because recontacting through the institution is your only good way of verifying their identity.
I've encountered banks that don't have that setup — hilariously one bank felt the need to cold call me about my complaint about cold calling from unverifiable numbers. When I asked how I could call them on a verifiable number, they claimed I couldn't. :/
If some malware is that deep on the phone, able to redirect calls, then you've got much bigger problems and the attacker might not even need to trick any cooperation at all.
My wife is trying to sort something with a famous Irish airline who are well known for messing people around. She has LPA/POA for her mother but rather than the airline accepting the VCode (this is the UK) the airline are requesting to see the original POA certificate which is just ridiculous. They seem to be moving a little quicker now there is solicitor involved.
Given how much back and forth there has been it's probably cost the airline more than just refunding the amount at the first request. We'll keep going to prove a point.