Policy background Single Financial Guidance Body
The Financial Guidance and Claims Act 2018 builds on a Government commitment to ensure that members of the public can access good-quality, free-to-client, impartial financial guidance and debt advice.
	Government-sponsored pensions guidance, money guidance and debt advice is currently provided by the Money Advice Service, the Pensions Advisory Service, and the Department for Work and Pensions under the ‘Pension Wise’ banner.
	In October 2015 the Government launched a review of public financial guidance provision in the United Kingdom. The review, Public financial guidance consultation1, sought views on how publicly funded pensions guidance, debt advice and money guidance (including financial capability) could best be structured to help people make effective financial decisions.
	In March 2016 the Government set out proposals to replace the Money Advice Service with a new, streamlined money guidance body, and to bring together the Pensions Advisory Service and ‘Pension Wise’ into a new pensions guidance body (Public financial guidance review: proposal for consultation2). Whilst stakeholders were generally supportive of the Government’s aims, concerns were raised over how the two bodies would work together, and whether a single body could provide a better, more streamlined service.
	In October 2016, the Government took the decision to create one single financial body instead of two, and in December 2016 HM Treasury and the Department for Work and Pensions published a further consultation, Public financial guidance review: consultation on a single body3, setting out proposals for a single financial guidance body that could provide more joined up debt advice, money guidance and pensions guidance, support the development of a national strategy to improve financial capability and debt management, and co-ordinate the provision of financial education to children and young people. This consultation closed in February 2017.
	The Financial Guidance and Claims Act 2018 includes provisions which will allow the Secretary of State to make regulations banning cold calling in connection with pensions and financial products and services. As part of its consumer protection function, the single financial guidance body will also have to consider the effect of cold calling on consumers and advise the Secretary of State whether to introduce bans on cold calling in respect of financial products and services.
	The Act also requires the Secretary of State to seek advice from the body on the establishment of a debt respite scheme and allows the Secretary of State to make regulations to introduce such a scheme after receiving this advice. The Act will also require the Financial Conduct Authority to make rules which require members of personal and stakeholder pension schemes to be referred to guidance before they access or transfer their pension. It also requires the Secretary of State and the Department for Communities in Northern Ireland to make secondary regulations placing corresponding requirements on occupational pensions schemes.