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Finance for all

12 November 2009

Money

Flexible finance
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Nestling in the School of Geographical Studies, accessed by a maze of stairs and winding corridors, is the Personal Finance Research Centre (PFRC), a prolific research centre which conducts social research into all aspects of personal finance.

The Centre’s research explores the daily problems of those who can’t get access to financial services, such as banking, credit and savings that many of us take for granted. “For example, we were involved in the early stages of designing very simple bank accounts that can’t go overdrawn,” said Sharon Collard, Deputy Director of the Centre. “The introduction of these basic bank accounts by banks and building societies means that many more people on low incomes have access to a bank account.  The ongoing challenge is to ensure that they benefit from having an account, an issue that the Government’s Financial Inclusion Taskforce is particularly interested in.”

It was clear from our evaluation that the scheme had the potential to make a significant difference to the lives of people on low incomes who currently do not benefit from any of the tax incentives to save.

Professor Elaine Kempson, Director of PFRC
The team was also involved in designing and evaluating the Saving Gateway, a ‘matched’ government savings scheme which will be available from 2010 to people on low incomes for whom generating savings is a distinct challenge. Professor Elaine Kempson, Director of PFRC said “It was clear from our evaluation that the scheme had the potential to make a significant difference to the lives of people on low incomes who currently do not benefit from any of the tax incentives to save.”

PFRC is a recognised source of expertise on financial issues.  As well as commissioned research — the resulting reports being shared with key stakeholders through round tables, printed reports and funders’ websites — the team is also active in a number of technical groups, advisory committees and taskforces. For example, Professor Kempson sits on the Financial Inclusion Taskforce and Social Security Advisory Committee and researcher Andrea Finney sits on the Wealth and Assets Survey Technical Group. The Centre is also an affiliate member of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Debt and Personal Finance. Internationally, it is represented on the EC Group on Financial Education, and team members have also acted as advisers to DFID, the OECD and the World Bank.

These activities bring PFRC’s research expertise directly to the table of policy makers through the provision of technical and advisory services. In turn, involvement in these high-level fora  informs PFRC’s programme of research, enabling  the Centre to remain at the cutting edge of current debates on personal finance matters.

Note: some of the documents on this page are in PDF format. In order to view a PDF you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader

 

Please contact The Public Engagement Officer for further information.

Further information:

Deputy Director Sharon Collard can be contacted at s.collard@bristol.ac.uk. The PFRC was the subject of a recent re:search article (2009) [PDF, 264 KB].