Customer LoginOur impact report for 2020-21
We’ve just published our annual Impact Report, providing an overview of the support we provided to customers during a full year impacted by the Covid pandemic. Click here to download the report.
Here are some of the highlights:
- Coronavirus support measures reduced the number of customers seeking debt advice, but caused a rise in existing debt solution customers needing our support.
- The average debt of new advice customers rose to £17,900.
- An increasing proportion of customers have negative disposable incomes and arrears on priority debts.
- The FWG Foundation is supporting financial education and funding DRO fees for customers who would otherwise be unable to start the solution.
- 8,400 customers successfully completed their debt solution and are free of the debts included in it.
Covid-19 has had a seismic impact on customers, our colleagues and Financial Wellness Group. It has been a time of extraordinary change and uncertainty – and the full effect on customers is yet to be seen.
Colleagues across Financial Wellness Group have risen magnificently to the challenge. Not only were we able to make a seamless transition to remote working, but the hard work and tenacity of our teams meant that we were able to maintain and often enhance the support we offered our customers.
In common with others across the sector, we’ve seen fewer customers seeking debt advice right through the pandemic. However, its clear that many households, have had to resort to borrowing to make ends meet, and many others have built up rent arrears or are behind with their utilities or council tax.
As winter approaches many households are already feeling the squeeze. In addition to the removal of the Universal Credit uplift, record petrol prices, soaring energy prices and increases to the cost of food are all putting huge pressure on many people’s budgets. As a result, it seems likely that demand for debt advice will climb over the coming months.
Financial Wellness Group is well positioned to help meet that demand. Our robust technology and omni-channel approach allows us to scale easily and quickly and support customers however they want to deal with us. For example, we make extensive use of secure messaging to allow DRO customers to quickly and securely provide us, direct from their mobile device, the evidence needed for us to progress their application. In fact, we typically complete DRO applications for customers in around 5 days.
Customers’ financial problems continue to get more complex: we’re seeing more advice seekers with deficit budgets, and a huge range of non-consumer credit debts such as utilities and rent arrears and local and central government debts. Increasingly this means that we need to work in tandem with other agencies to put the right package of support measures in place.
We are also working hard to find new ways of working to support customers who have wider needs and vulnerabilities beyond their money worries. This means continuing to build partnerships to ensure a holistic service for customers.
Looking ahead, there will be more change for the debt advice sector – such as new ways of working driven by technology and online advice, changes to insolvency regulation and the arrival of the Statutory Debt Management Plan. Financial Wellness Group is well placed to play a leading role in the sector and will continue to work hard to ensure that our customers can ‘live more and stress less”.
Ian Somerset, Chief Executive Officer of Financial Wellness Group
