News 24 July 2008
Money Guidance Conference
The first Money Guidance conference took place on 21 – 22 July at St John's College, Cambridge. At this, we set out our progress so far on the Money Guidance pathfinder and sought expert views on the path we are taking.
Over 100 key stakeholders attended from industry, government and the third sector and took part in workshops and discussions. We also provided the delegates with the next steps.
The Conference
Kitty Ussher MP, Economic Secretary to the Treasury, gave the key-note speech on Sunday evening and outlined the government's support for the FSA on this project.
David Kenmir introduced Otto Thoresen, architect of the Thoresen Review, who was the key-note speaker on Monday night. Otto's speech was a call to arms, reminding us to keep it simple and focus on the users of the service.
Our plans for the pathfinder were validated during the conference and we are on track to launch a telephone, face-to-face and web service in early 2009 in the North East and North West of England.
Attendees at the conference said that the event was ‘Interesting, informative and inspiring’ (John Mos, Medical Partnership) and ‘Very useful, good content - very relevant, well managed’ (Des Hamilton, TPAS).
The workshops
We held workshops on digital, service delivery, service content, engagement, and evaluation [links to all below]. In these workshops we updated delegates on the progress of the work so far, and asked them for input. We wanted to check we were travelling in the right direction, and using delegates' knowledge and experience of working with potential money guidance users and potential deliverers of money guidance – ‘money guiders’. We have summarised the key messages that we took away from the workshops below, which we confirmed with the delegates on the final day.
Digital
- Case management – we need to look carefully at the need for this and what it means in a Money Guidance world.
- Delegates would prefer us to develop our own systems and ask partners to interact with them. Doing it the other way round wouldn't be feasible by early 2009.
- Think about expanding portals from information to interaction – podcasts, forums etc.
- There are systems already in existence similar to the Money Guider portal idea – we need to learn from them.
- It is important to have consistency of information/messages across all three channels.
- Money guiders need to be able to use the web to support them as a community, e.g. enabling guiders to share experiences online, compare notes and seek answers to difficult questions.
Service delivery
- Ensure consistency across the service users through partnerships.
- Ensure awareness of the service and universal access to it through partners using the appropriate channels.
- Articulate minimum standards of knowledge and skills required to enable partners to assess competency.
- Define and manage the user journey through the Money Guidance service and multiple channels.
- Identify development needs during the pathfinder through experience and user and partner feedback.
Engagement
- Keep the user at the heart of the service.
- Tailor the service appropriately as the target audience is made up of many different groups.
- Leverage the good work already in existence.
- Use the role of trusted intermediaries to engage with the target market.
- Consider less traditional communication channels.
- A multifaceted communication/engagement plan is ambitious in the timescales for launch, and can be explored further during the pathfinder.
Service content
- Focus the users to take action.
- What is that action and how can it be measured?
- Engagement with specialists is a two-way referral process.
- Concern was expressed that the boundary with regulated activities may be set too low and that the lack of an ability to make clear recommendations may mean that Money Guidance does not push people into taking action.
- But there was also a reminder that Money Guidance is not primarily about products; most people need help with the basics where the boundary will not be an issue.
Evaluation
- Delegates accepted a pragmatic approach to the evaluation, given the time constraints placed on it.
- They were very keen to know targets in terms of reach, e.g. are the most vulnerable being reached?
- The importance of demonstrating the benefits of the service to the industry was emphasised.
- Soft actions are as important to track as hard actions, delegates agreed, although these should be reported separately.
- Time will be needed to embed the brand. Measuring impact will focus on whether users found the guidance helpful and what actions they took as a consequence.
- We must be able to evaluate the relative performance of different delivery partners.
- We must be able to assess the money guiders.
What are the next steps?
The pathfinder already has an organisation structure in place and seeks views from the Financial Capability Steering Group . The programme board is chaired by Chris Pond and is run jointly by the FSA and the Treasury.
The initiation phase ended in July – this is why it was so valuable to get your input at this key time.
We now move into the development phase, and will start to issue contracts and grants through an appropriate procurement process. This will be a phased approach undertaken in a timely fashion to ensure that we have a robust service up and running in early 2009.
You can register your interest as a supplier using our new automated e-tendering service; we can then invite you to participate in selected FSA tenders.