Building a Nation of Savers: How MaPS worked in partnership to create the Savings Charter

Building a ‘Nation of Savers’ is one of the five pillars of our UK Strategy for Financial Wellbeing. A key theme of this ten-year strategy is to see 2 million more working age ‘struggling’ and ‘squeezed’ adults saving regularly. To make this happen, we’re working in partnership with industry, government and third sector organisations across the UK. 

Savings provide something for people to draw on in times of need. Our research shows that being able to save money on a regular basis can greatly improve people’s financial and overall wellbeing (1). However, our survey data also shows that fewer than 60% of working age adults on low-to-modest incomes are saving regularly (2). 

It is these two facts that led to the creation of the Savings Charter.

The purpose behind creating a Savings Charter is to raise the profile of savings across the UK. The Savings Charter is designed specifically for savings providers across the spectrum of financial services: banks, building societies, credit unions and fintech. It allows firms to raise the profile of savings through their branch network, digital retail operations, or through their community-based activities, such as educational institutions, community/faith groups or the workplace.

In 2020 we brought together a group of senior experts within financial services. Together, we reviewed the evidence and came up with recommendations for how we could collectively increase by 2 million, the number of working age savers (aged 18 and over) on low-to-modest incomes over a ten-year period.

We settled on three core recommendations:

• Expand at scale the provision of emergency workplace savings, especially opt-out (autosave) schemes offered by employers
• Raise awareness of Help to Save, a government-backed savings scheme for people on low incomes and receiving certain benefits to top up their income
• Create a Savings Charter for financial services

The Savings Charter commitments were drafted to be inclusive of all savings providers at whichever stage of the journey they are in building a Nation of Savers.

The five commitments of the Savings Charter are:

• Publicly demonstrate a commitment to build financial security through savings
• Support individuals to save by understanding their financial situation and goals
• Give people an access to their savings buffer when they need it
• Keep customers informed about their savings and their options as customers
• Talk about saving in your local communities, and places of education and work

Firms are invited to sign up to one, more than one, or all five. Some firms will be well advanced in their savings approach and so will already be working to achieve all five commitments in support of their customers, or in the communities where they operate. Other firms may be at an earlier stage of their journey to raise the profile of savings and so choose to take an incremental approach.

To arrive at these five commitments for the Savings Charter, we consulted a range of savings providers across financial services: banks (NatWest Group, TSB), building societies and credit unions representing the mutual sector (Building Societies Association, Capital Credit Union, Irish League of Credit Unions), fintech (FinTech Scotland, Wagestream).

In becoming a signatory, firms are asked to set out how they are working towards meeting the needs of the Nation of Savers target population (working age people on low-to-modest incomes) alongside any other customer groups they are targeting. We also ask that firms indicate that they have signed the Savings Charter and are working towards the commitments they have signed up to in the cycle of their normal corporate reporting (for example, a press release or an annual report). 

Once firms have completed the easy sign-up process, we will issue them with a Savings Charter logo that can be used on corporate communications. We will also list that they have signed up on our Savings Charter pages. 

You can sign up to our Savings Charter here. 

We encourage firms to signpost their customers to our MoneyHelper services to support them in building their financial resilience through saving. MoneyHelper is our consumer-facing service, and some of their useful saving tools and resources include: 

• How to saveOpens in a new window 
• Types of savings Opens in a new window
• Savings calculatorOpens in a new window 
• Budget PlannerOpens in a new window 

With the maturing of Child Trust Funds since September 2020, we have also been working with government to raise the profile of these accounts to all 18 to 22-year-olds and their parents or carers. This MoneyHelper blog postOpens in a new window is focused on highlighting how to trace and access these funds, accumulated since birth, for free. 

(1) UK Strategy for Financial Wellbeing: Listening Phase Report 2020 

(2) Nation of Savers: a report from the UK Adult Financial Wellbeing Survey 2022