Firing Line Caroline Rookes

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Firing Line Caroline Rookes

Its current chief executive, Caroline Rookes, announced at the end of last year, that she would leave early and retire in April. This was despite the Financial Conduct Authority and HM Treasury approving her reappointment until February 2019, after three years in the role.

Speaking before the publication of detailed government plans on the single guidance body just before Christmas, Ms Rookes said: "I came on a three-year contract and my plan was to do the three years and to leave, but as it turned out with the timing of various reviews and announcements at the end of the three years, it just didn't seem the right time to go.

"It seemed important to stabilise the organisation, and with the latest ministerial decision to create the single guidance body to take the best of Mas and TPAS, it was a good time to step down and hand the reins to someone else."

The MAS has had a troubled existence from the start. Formed in 2011 on the back of the Thoresen Review of generic financial advice, the idea behind it was to encourage people to budget properly, to manage their debts and understand how to engage with financial services.

But the criticism subsequently levelled at Mas was that it was unclear how it should go about this, especially since several well-established organisations such as Step Change, TPAS and Citizens Advice already did much of this work. 

 

Abolished 

The organisation spent tens of millions on establishing a brand, to persuade people to come to its website, and paid its initial chief executive Tony Hobman £350,000. Several reviews later – from HM Treasury, the National Audit Office and the Treasury select committee – it was decided last year to abolish it. The original plan was to create two organisations – a slimmed-down guidance body and a pensions guidance organisation, announced in the Budget last March. This was changed in October last year, when it was announced that there would be a single guidance body, following representations from industry.

Ms Rookes said: "I don't think it had a clear enough view of what it wanted to do. It took some time to work that through.

"I was clear from the start what our long-term objective was, and therefore what we needed to do to get there. We have a very strong sense of direction and clear strategy for the next couple of years. My intention is to create a very strong legacy that understands what the consumer needs, and works with partners to deliver that."

One of the main challenges for Mas in the advice sector was whether it was taking over from financial advisers in their role. This was not helped many have argued, by the word 'advice' in Mas's name.

Ms Rookes said: "It's not advice in the sense of regulated advice. The key difference is regulated advice can provide personal recommendations – we can't. We help people understand what their options are and what the pros and cons are. 

"What we don't say is: 'You can go and take out an Isa.' We can only work in general terms. The professional, paid-for regulated advice sector will go further and give people individual, personalised financial advice – there is a clear distinction between the two.

"We help people understand how to go about getting a mortgage and the various questions they need to think about, such as what happens when interest rates go up."

 

Raised profile  

Ms Rookes is a career civil servant, having been the director of private pensions at the Department for Work & Pensions for eight years. She said that since she took over at MAS, the organisation has been refocused, has generated more contacts and reduced the spend on marketing.

She said: "More people are recognising they need help for their money and they're coming to us for that help, and we achieve satisfaction of over 90 per cent. In the most recent half yearly results, you see an increase in contacts to around 13m, and we're on course for about 26m.

"We have developed Mas as a consumer-facing organisation. We've always been very clear as to the purpose of Mas – to raise the financial capability of the UK. Financial capability levels are dismal when one fifth of people can't read the balance on their bank statement. We have got 40 per cent of people who have savings of less than £100 – we've got some issues.

"We are the only source of impartial money guidance and we know that that counts for a lot with customers out there."

 

Merged bodies 

Nonetheless, MAS as we know it will be disappearing. Does she see this as a failure? "It's not a failure of Mas. For me, the idea of a single guidance body has got to be a step forward. What we're looking at is how to improve people's access to guidance. Merging all the bodies is bringing together the best of them."

The future shape of the new single guidance body is to be consulted on, so it will be some time before it takes shape. But Ms Rookes will be gone before then, retiring, safe from the turf wars and the politics.

Melanie Tringham is features editor at Financial Adviser 

Biography

2013 - 2017 Chief executive, Money Advice Service

2005 - 2013 Director of private pensions, Department for Work and Pensions

2002 - 2005 Director – savings and share schemes, HM Revenue & Customs

2000 Director, charities, HM Revenue & Customs

Non-executive

2015 - present Trustee of Nest

2015 - present Trustee, Civil Service Sports Council pension scheme