Debt advice firm recruiting more than 100 new personnel to offer support
Trafford-based debt advisor, Money Wellness, is to appoint more than 100 new professional advisers.
The new staff will provide additional capacity and deliver free debt advice and ongoing support services following its commission earlier this month by the Money & Pensions Service (MaPS).
The advisers will be employed on a flexible working basis allowing people to work from Money Wellness’s Manchester offices, or nationally from home, which has proven to be hugely successful post-COVID.
The appointments provide the capacity to enable Money Wellness to deliver 24-hour, seven day a week support to people struggling with their finances via the phone, webchat or online, and will help achieve its pledge to deliver free debt advice and ongoing support services to more than million people over the next three years.
The MaPS commission means Money Wellness is one of only three organisations to deliver free debt advice nationally and one of only two appointed to administer debt relief orders (DROs), which commenced at the start of February 2023.
Ian Somerset, Money Wellness chief executive, said: “Soaring inflation, interest rates and high energy prices have all affected families across the length and breadth of the country. These are difficult times for many. We’re finding the ‘cost of living crisis’ is being cited over and over each day as the reason for reaching out for free debt help. And this trend is one that will continue to grow over the course of this year and well into 2024 as the economy steadies itself.”
He added: “The additional appointments will ensure we have the capacity and the time to expand on the exceptional support we already offer to anyone struggling with problem debt. We see the service we offer not as a short term solution, but a long standing relationship where we are there every step of the way.”
The appointments come at a time when MaPS’s debt relief survey, published in January 2023, revealed 22% of the UK adult population are deemed as ‘at risk’ of falling into problem debt, an increase of 1.2 million people compared with its last study in 2021.
The report also found 18% of people needed access to debt advice, equating to around 9.3million people, a rise of 800,000 on the same period.
