A national scheme encouraging advisers to do pro bono work will help “build trust and awareness of the value of professional advice”, David Ingram has said.
Speaking about a project being rolled out by the Citizens Advice Bureau and Personal Finance Society aimed at providing generic financial advice to the public, PFS president Mr Ingram said: “This is an important part of our ongoing campaign to build trust and awareness of the value of professional advice among consumers and consumer organisations.”
He added that it was putting professional advice “at the forefront of delivering valuable local community services”.
The Moneyplan project, set to launch this year, will call on advisers to provide pro bono guidance at more than 100 of the CAB offices across the country.
Volunteers will be matched with a local branch and in some cases could do a mixture of guidance face-to-face and over the phone.
This follows a pilot, run between 2007 and 2009 at 30 centres, where more than 1,100 people received pro bono support.
Keith Richards, the PFS chief executive, said: “In the context of the recent budget pension changes and the government’s commitment to a guidance guarantee, Moneyplan is an existing, proven and valued model for delivering money guidance by professional qualified financial advisers.
“We have been working with Citizens Advice Bureau on plans to enhance access and availability across the UK, long before the Chancellor’s budget announcement, following an original trial which started originally back in 2005, and forms part of our commitment to wider public interest initiatives.”
