Around nine million people in the UK are over-indebted, and supply of debt advice is struggling to keep up with the demand.
To respond to this rapidly changing marketplace, services need to find new and innovative ways to serve customers. While face-to-face debt advice services remain crucial, people are increasingly using online channels for a range of services and experiences.
Remote debt advice will play an increasingly important role in meeting demand, with an expansion of remote advice recommended by Peter Wyman in his Independent Review of Debt Advice Funding.
In view of this, the Money and Pensions Service (MaPS) commissioned two pieces of research to:
- explore, through a customer-centric co-design process, how advice should be delivered through remote channels to meet customer need, and
- identify upcoming trends and developments and predict how these might present opportunities or threats for remote debt advice.
The final reports summarise the findings of these research projects, including recommendations for debt advice services and for MaPS which will be considered in future work.
Download the reports: