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The UK Strategy for Financial Wellbeing is taking forward the work of the Financial Capability Strategy Opens in a new window

Money Advice Service and The Financial Capability Strategy

The role of the Money Advice Service in supporting the Financial Capability Strategy for the UK

The Financial Capability Strategy is a collective impact partnership addressing a UK-wide problem.

By working together and coordinating our efforts we aim to create lasting solutions to the large-scale social problem of low financial capability.

For collective impact to succeed, we need a strong backbone organisation to provide support and create the conditions to make all the other activities possible.

The Money Advice Service (MAS) is a publicly funded body, which provides the backbone for the Financial Capability Strategy for the UK. In practice this means:

  • Providing the money and staff to organise the people leading the strategy through the Financial Capability Board, steering groups and the annual Financial Capability Week
  • Advancing the research and development function of the strategy though large-scale surveys, What Works Fund and creation of standardised evolution frameworks and toolkits
  • Funding the delivery of some of the Strategy’s key goals, including debt advice and free online and telephone guidance.

MAS’s Corporate Strategy supports the wider Financial Capability Strategy for the UK, by making the UK Strategy possible at all, and delivering against some of its goals.

In doing all this MAS provides some but by no means all of the intellectual leadership helping those working on the Strategy to tackle this complex problem.

Things are changing, but Parliament is expected to enshrine in law the duty to coordinate a financial capability strategy – a major step forward in the life of the Strategy.

In 2018 it is expected a new single financial guidance body will be set up that will take on the responsibilities of the Money Advice Service. According to the current draft of legislation, this body will have a statutory duty to coordinate a national financial capability strategy.

Find out more: the Money Advice Service’s 2018/19 Business Plan

Find out more: the draft Act of Parliament establishing the single Financial Guidance Bodyopens in new window