Additional support and services

As a response to the coronavirus pandemic, we’ve created debt and coronavirus support guides to help those worried about their finances due to the impact of coronavirus. The guides are created to help your customers through this difficult time, and remind them that they aren’t alone. Whether it's money worries, being scared of losing jobs, or struggling to pay the bills, there is a guide to help.

Persistent debt is when a person has paid more in interest, fees and charges than they have towards paying off their credit card, store card, or catalogue account balance for more than 18 months.

When only the minimum payments are made, typically they’ll likely stay in persistent debt because more of the payment is going towards the interest and charges than reducing the balance. If they pay more than the minimum payment, they’ll reduce their balance quicker because more of the repayment is going towards the balance.

We can help your customers review their budget to see if they can pay more to help reduce their balance with the aim of getting their account out of persistent debt. We’ll work with your customer to create a budget and identify how much they may be able to afford to repay.

From our research, we know that it can take up to 12 months for people struggling with problem debt to get debt advice. To maximise engagement at the earliest stage, we provide a triage tool for your customers that helps them understand what level of support they might need, and if they’re in problem debt. The triage tool asks your customers a series of questions to help us understand their current financial situation and identify which service is likely to be appropriate for them using the information collected.

By doing this, we can provide clients with a range of tailored support services, at any stage of financial concern.

Our triage tool provides your customers with a customised journey and creates an emotional connection to know they aren’t alone, and that we’re here to support and provide guidance to help them take control of their situations.

We have more than 28 years' experience providing free, expert debt advice. Our debt information library contains hundreds of articles to answer your customers' questions about debt. 

In addition to debt information, we also have lots of practical money advice tips on how your customers can keep on top of their debt by reducing their spending and maximising their income.

Our ‘7 Days 7 Ways’ email programme can help your customers take back control of their finances in just one week. The programme helps your customers prepare for a debt advice session. It'll also help them how to manage their finances and stay on top of their most important bills.

We also provide signposting advice to additional specialist support services, such as appropriate external organisations, support groups, and charities, where we cannot provide the service required. An example of this is GamCare. We’ve recognised gambling problems can often make debt problems worse, so we direct customers to GamCare if we think they’ll be able to help We can help clients with any debt problems that may have arisen from a gambling addiction. However, it’ll be easier for clients to deal with their debts if they’re also receiving support to reduce or stop gambling.

Our client support team works hard to make sure each customer has their annual review check to see if their income and expenditure has changed. By doing this, we’re able to identify if the plan they are currently on is still right for them and is realistic and provide them support where needed on their journey of becoming debt-free with us.

During the review, we’ll also look at how well your customer is managing their personal budget, and make sure that their household has enough to live on. Customers are able to complete their annual review through our online portal, or one of our expert debt advisors can contact them via telephone.

We have a specialist team who work with your most vulnerable customers who may be experiencing mental health problems, a long-term or terminal illness, dementia, a brain injury, or have difficulty in communicating. Our team have additional training and tools to support them. We also partner with a number of organisations that can offer them extra help, such as MIND, Samaritans and Macmillan.

On 4 May 2021 new legislation came into force, marking a much-needed change for people in problem debt. The Statutory Breathing Space scheme gives eligible people seeking debt advice time to focus on resolving their debts and comes as a result of years of campaigning led by StepChange.

At StepChange, we want to use our debt advice expertise to help employers with their colleague financial wellbeing offering, supporting them to access debt advice and money guidance when they need it. Download free resources for your colleagues.