Promoting financial inclusion
Above: 20 employees from Wealth Management spent a week working with charity, Habitat for Humanity, constructing five houses for a rural community near Bangalore, India.
Some people can find it difficult to access financial services, with challenges in three areas: bank accounts, credit and debt advice. We are the UK’s largest provider of Basic Bank Accounts, which are designed for customers who have had difficulty in entering the banking system.
We recognise that some people’s financial needs may be better fulfilled by organisations outside the banking sector and we work with Third Sector bodies to improve the provision of affordable credit to people on low incomes. In January, RBS was chosen as the main banking partner of Scotcash, a new Community Development Finance Institution set up to provide access to affordable credit to people in Glasgow who have not had full access to mainstream financial services.
In supplying money advice, our work aims to improve the quality and availability of information for people facing difficulties managing their finances. Of course, much of what we do in this area is part of the service we routinely offer to customers. In addition to general advice, available through MoneySense, our research shows that customers value tailored money management advice
that helps them when they are making specific decisions. In 2007, our response included recruiting an additional 1,000 Customer Service Advisers in our RBS and NatWest branches and undertaking 1.2 million personal financial reviews with our customers.
We also support the money advice sector. Our efforts here are channelled through the Money Advice Trust (‘MAT’), a charity formed in 1991 to improve the supply of free and independent money advice. We continue to be the largest corporate sponsor of MAT. Our support allows the MAT to train Debt Advisers. More than 90% of the free money advice sector is trained using RBS funded materials and our funding supports 5,000 free places on training courses each year. We have chosen to focus our support specifically on face-to-face advice because it is the preferred channel for those on lowest incomes.
In the US, Citizens’ Individual Development Account offers low income families incentives to save for home ownership, post-secondary education or business ownership. This anti-poverty strategy combines learning about financial management with incentives to save for long-term assets that improve the economic security and lifetime earning power of participants.
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