UK fintech Fintuity offers free financial advice to NHS staff
Fintuity, a UK-based digital financial adviser, has teamed up with the country’s National Health Service (NHS) to offer NHS staff free financial advice during the coronavirus crisis.
Doctors, nurses and emergency service workers can access a specialist adviser via a Fintuity video link and get guidance on mortgages, insurance, pensions and savings.
Fintuity says it entered the market to “disrupt” traditional financial advisory players
As well as being able to book a slot with an adviser, NHS staffers will also have access to the fintech’s online platform, which can help them keep track of household expenditure, income, and outgoings.
Fintuity says it felt “duty-bound to assist those who are risking their lives to safeguard the nation”, acknowledging that social distancing restrictions and the closure of all non-essential services has severely limited access to reliable financial advice.
“We are very proud to offer completely free online financial advice to NHS staffers at a time when family budgets are squeezed and there is so much uncertainty in the economy,” says Fintuity’s strategy director Edward Downpatrick.
“At this time of national emergency, it is absolutely vital that communities and businesses come together to support health service workers in any way they can.”
The 2017-founded fintech claims to be the only online Independent Financial Adviser (IFA) regulated by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
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The coronavirus has put huge pressure on all sectors – especially those that are traditionally lacking digital services – to adapt overnight, including the market of financial advice.
In past years, the market has tapped just a small fraction of the population, and its services have been heavily based on face-to-face interviews. An FCA interim consumer research report found only 4.5 million UK adults took financial advice between 2017 and 2018.
But in the advent of the crisis, hundreds and thousands of financial advisers will be sitting at home unable to meet clients without the digital infrastructure required to connect remotely.
This means the financial advice market is now being forced to adapt to the disruptive model posed to it by Fintuity back in 2017.
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