In Focus Collections
Disrupting advice
The Financial Wellness Group is developing new strategies to help consumers come through difficult times
Deborah Ware Chief operating officer, Financial Wellness Group Deborah.Ware@financial
wellnessgroup.co.uk
Even before the pandemic, it was clear to us at Financial Wellness Group that, as a sector, we could do more to support those in financial difficulty. Customers typically engage with debt advice too late, when their financial situation has, more often than not, become critical and complex. As a result, their debt problems have
often taken a terrible toll on their lives: their mental health, physical health, work, family, relationships – and, of course, their financial prospects. Debt advice and the solutions that follow
are treatment for the symptoms, but often do not address customers’ underlying problems. It could be a lack of financial capability, an inability to budget or to save, an addiction or another mental or physical health problem. That is why we are on a mission to
disrupt the way debt advice is delivered: earlier intervention when people start to struggle, enhanced help for our customers during their time on a solution, and then ongoing support once they complete it.
The Financial Wellness Group mission Financial Wellness Group brings together holistic debt advice provider Gregory Pennington with Freeman Jones (insolvency
practitioners delivering IVA advice and administration), and Wilson Andrews (insolvency practitioners delivering trust deed advice and administration). As those brands, we have helped more than one million people over the last 25 years, with 60,000 people now benefitting from our support as we manage over £1.1bn of their debt. To do this, we are innovating to expand
our services beyond debt advice and solutions. Whilst providing holistic support for customers while they are on a debt solution, helping tackle the underlying causes of their debt problem, we are also working on re-building customers’ confidence, providing enhanced support to help them save more, borrow responsibly, continue to budget, maintain a financially healthy lifestyle overall and repair their damaged credit rating through our new app – in other words, to helping our customers live more and stress less. And our collaboration work with creditors
is key to this approach. We are already on track to deliver around £100m back to creditors in 2020; and closer collaboration to identify and provide support for customers earlier in the cycle will benefit creditors as well as those in debt. To alleviate stress for customers, we are
Many more features to support customers to maximise their income are already in development and will be rolled out over the coming months
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able to personalise the service we provide to meet individual needs, particularly for those struggling with poor mental health or other vulnerabilities. The approach is very timely: our own research shows that anxiety levels have increased considerably since lockdown started (see Figure 1).
Investing in technology Our new app makes it even easier for IVA and DMP customers to manage their
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financial wellbeing using their own mobile device. The app, which is free for our customers
to download and use, is available for Apple and Android devices. Whilst customers’ debt solutions are, of course, at the heart of the app, there is much more to it: the app will become a vital way for customers to access the full range of financial wellbeing support we offer, including shopping discounts, access to free video consultations with doctors, free counselling services, and complementary specialist help with legal, employment, housing and consumer issues. Many more features to support customers
to maximise their income are already in development and will be rolled out over the coming months.
Collaboration Insight-driven, cutting-edge technology enables us to be more responsive to the changing needs of our customers. And innovation and technology also underpin our focus on being agile and responsive to the needs of creditor partners. Using technology and data-science toolkits allows exploration of new and exciting ways to deliver advice and solutions in synergy with creditors. We are supporting existing partners to
enhance the way debt advice is introduced at various stages of the collections process, including, where possible, identifying customers who could benefit from advice earlier in the cycle. We have recently begun a test and learn partnership with a large national digital retailer in a way that exemplifies this approach. In under four weeks we were able to deliver a proof of concept referral process flexible enough to meet the creditor’s requirements, offering
July 2020
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