Aims and Board
What does the Financial Vulnerability Taskforce seek to achieve?
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Provide strategic leadership across the Personal Finance Sector in respect of professional dealings with clients and prospective clients in vulnerable circumstances, helping to promote the concept of a ‘safe pair of hands’ in terms of both attitude, approach, business processes and outcomes.
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Create a programme of work by soliciting the support of subject matter experts to help create a body of relevant educational material and ‘opinion pieces’ (held within the Resource Library)
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Engage constructively with others including regulators and relevant Parliamentary Groups to influence change
The Board
The Board of the Financial Vulnerability Taskforce consists of the following Directors:
Keith Richards (Chair)
Chair of the Financial Vulnerability Taskforce
Caroline Bielanska
Independent consultant to law firms, winner of the Vulnerable Client Practice Award 2017 (STEP) and joint founder, former CEO and Chair of Solicitors for the Elderly
Professor Keith Brown
Founding Director of the National Centre for Post-Qualifying Social Work and Professional Practice (NCPQSW) and Chair of the NHS England Safeguarding Adults National Network
Andrew Mason
Non-Executive Director, Matrix Capital Limited and Independent Chair of the Telford & Wrekin Safeguarding Partnership
Robin Melley, FPFS TEP
Managing Director, Matrix Capital Limited and past and 2020 winner of the Chartered Financial Planner of the Year Award (PFS)
Tony Miles, DipPFS (Secretariat)
Tali Shlomo, FCIPD
Laura Thursfield
Leader of the Birmingham Financial Planning team at Mazars LLP, Laura has a strong business focus on financial deprivation, vulnerable communities, LGBT, BAME and later life issues. She was also Rising Star in the Women in Financial Advice Awards 2018 and Birmingham Young Professional of the Year 2018.
Head of Inclusion and Wellbeing, Sherman & Sterling LLP, globally recognised HR Director, diversity, inclusion and wellbeing specialist
Technical Director of Care Navigator My Care Consultant
Subject Matter Expert Membership
We aim to establish a representative and authoritative group of subject matter experts to support the work of the Taskforce, including future membership of special interest groups. The Steering Group has identified an initial list of people we think would make a valuable contribution in these respects and will be contacting them individually to solicit their help and support.
Commentary from Keith Richards, Chairman.
Many people outside of our profession will instinctively feel vulnerable in respect of what might seem complex financial matters and when dealing with ‘experts’, until trust is gained.
Given the technical nature of much financial planning and advice which automatically places most in a position of knowledge-based dependency, if our profession is to grow and flourish we must address this issue head on and with a sense of urgency. In doing so, we must act not only in the best interests of our clients but do what we can at every opportunity to demonstrate and be seen as a trusted ‘safe pair of hands’, a term that I believe most people intuitively understand and value.
The current regulatory focus on vulnerability provides a timely opportunity as a ‘united’ profession to change public perception through the way in which we consciously deal with those in vulnerable circumstances and address perceptions or the unconscious reality of commercial conflicts of interest.
To do so, we need to find a way to collaborate across the personal finance sector and beyond, to find some basis of consistency in service delivery and understanding. It is with this in mind that The Personal Finance Society has put its support behind the creation of The Financial Vulnerability Taskforce.
I encourage firms and every member of the Personal Finance, Insurance and wider Financial Services profession to adopt and align with the statements within our Charter, support this endeavour and publicly display your commitment via a new digital logo.
Keith Richards
Chairman of the Financial Vulnerability Taskforce Steering Group