The claim from Paul Chafer, sales and marketing director at Stroud & Swindon (S&S), said more firms should look at this area and claimed that S&S was active in its responsibility towards training employees to offer useful financial advice and was working alongside the Financial Services Authority (FSA) to ensure compliance.
He said: “The recent government announcement that personal finances will form a greater part of the education syllabus is very welcome and will help with the UK’s financial literacy problems. We call for more providers to actively work to improve their customers understanding of financial matters.”
Chafer also claimed that it is important that providers are active in their approach to supplying financial advice and they should be educating Britons further about money matters, especially with the cost of living named as the primary financial concern for the UK.
He said: “Financial advice is not appreciated by the general population who don’t understand it. If your car breaks down you take it into a garage, but in finance there is no one to sort these problems out. We now have every incentive with treating customers fairly, but it should be a curriculum subject and taking it into schools has been a goal of mine for some time.
If people were educated you would reduce the number of complaints significantly.”
Neville Richards, chief executive of Britannia Group, said: “Firms have a duty to ensure transparency of product terms and regulators must ensure a level playing field.”
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