Motivations and barriers to seeking debt advice

One of the goals of The Money and Pensions Service (MaPS) is to provide better debt advice. While debt advice is available in many different forms, many people who could benefit from debt advice do not seek help. In this study, we sought to better understand the barriers and drivers to people accessing debt advice.

This research improves our understanding of the barriers and drivers to people's accessing debt advice and assists MaPS and the wider debt advice sector in developing solutions to help people in need of debt advice, in particularly for those in the most vulnerable circumstances.

• People who need debt advice and do not receive it are divided into two groups: People that need debt advice but do not try to get it, and people that need debt advice, try to get it but do not receive it. The latter group are further divided into those who tried to get advice and were unsuccessful and those who start the process but disengaged before receiving a solution.
• The research found ten steps in the common user journey of the groups above. The journey is divided into two distinct stages: pre-debt advice and seeking debt advice. People regularly move up and down the steps, making progress and then falling back, or dropping out altogether before seeking advice.

The research identified 11 barriers to seeking debt advice:

1. People feel embarrassed and shameful
2. People find it too overwhelming 
3. Low (financial) literacy and confidence
4. Debt is not always the priority problem
5. People do not identify with their debt problem
6. People think short term fixes work
7. People are not sure where to turn
8. People misunderstand what debt advice is
9. People think they’ll lose more than gain
10.  People cannot share all the information
11.  People want to do it their way

In respect to these, we found that:

• Barriers 1 to 4 affected every step of the debt advice-seeking journey
• Barriers 3 to 4 are amplified for people with vulnerabilities
• Barriers 5 to 11 affect the motivation at specific steps of the debt advice-seeking journey

Solutions concepts were tested with positive results providing the initial steps to develop a more effective engagement service.

Our research partners develop nine recommendations to address the above barriers:

1. Reframe advice in terms of financial wellbeing
2. Make the journey flexible 
3. Radically simplify the process
4. Create more pre-debt advice touchpoints
5. Educate on the negative impact of quick fixes
6. Increase the visibility of free debt advice services
7. Rebuild the relationship with debt advice
8. Educate on what people will gain from advice
9. Give people more control over the journey

We hope these findings will be useful for:

• debt advice organisations
• policymakers
• any stakeholders interested in how to refer customers more effectively to debt advice

MaPS’ will use the insights from this research to inform activity to deliver its longer-term commissioning strategy.

MaPS’ will also develop further and test some of the solutions provided in this research to increase awareness and engagement of people in need of debt advice to receive the help they need.

We hope it proves valuable for our partner organisations and the wider debt advice sector to develop policies and design innovative services to improve the provision of debt advice.

This research was commissioned by the Money and Pensions Service to CogCo and Common Collective. We thank all the organisations and individuals who have contributed to and participated in this research.