Transcript Improving financial confidence evaluation contract

Valuing tenancies
… by improving financial confidence
HSA Annual Conference 2014,
Danny Friedman,
Cobweb Consulting and Ecorys Associate
An outline of the IFC programme ……
• Big Lottery Fund £31.7m strategic investment
• Targeting social housing tenants –
– first time,
– young tenants,
– in and out of work
• Testing different approaches to engaging social housing
residents in financial inclusion activities
• Demonstrating and disseminating impact of activities to social
housing landlords and financial sector organisations
• 37 projects delivering range of activities for 3 to 5 years
• Led by social landlords and voluntary sector organisations, with
buy in from local authorities
Improving Financial Confidence outcomes
• Social housing residents have greater access to appropriate
and affordable financial services and products
• Social housing residents have increased skills and confidence
to use financial products and services and will continue to apply
these skills and this confidence
• Social housing providers engage with most in need residents to
enable them to understand the relevance of financial
inclusion and capability services
• Social housing and financial sector organisations have
increased awareness of the impact of a range of approaches
to engaging social housing residents in financial inclusion
activities.
Changing attitudes and behaviours
• Building resilience in at early stages / critical points of tenancies
• Promoting preventative strategies – but also becoming remedial
• Changing attitudes and behaviours of tenants in both the immediate
and longer terms
• Self-evaluation and assessment of behaviour / attitude change AND
empirical testing of reality v. belief
Demonstrating impact of programme (1)
Baseline indicators and measuring change
• Measurable baseline indicators for beneficiaries and landlords
• Then over time assess costs and savings for:
• Landlords
• Tenants
• Two cuts of tenant data captured, and landlord initial
baseline
• Use clusters and client groupings to show ‘what works’
• Use counterfactuals to compare high level results
– Still under discussion, but data from non-participants in five projects currently
being collected
– Based on administrative data rather than self-reported data
Demonstrating impact of programme (2)
Measuring attitudinal / behavioural change
MyFC tool
• Based on the JRF Equip toolkit
• Takes five minutes (if that)
• Simple set of 12 statements (e.g.) ‘I feel confident in managing my
money’; each scored on a seven point scale
• Tool used as beneficiary enters programme
• Retaken blind after appropriate period (6 months, 1 year)
• Overall financial confidence score calculated (minus 1 to plus 1)
• Change measured
Baseline indicators for beneficiaries –
Demographics
•
7,126 beneficiaries from 33 projects
•
58% women, 42% men (67% women in in/out work group)
•
Average age 32 (42 for in/out work, 20 for young people)
•
71% white British (67% for new tenants)
•
Low educational attainment – 40% with no qualifications (or ‘didn’t
know’
•
Unemployment 58%
•
Full or p/t employment 19%
•
26% had disability (12% among young tenants), 11% can’t work
because of disability
•
20% had support worker (31% among young tenants)
Baseline indicators for beneficiaries –
Financial difficulty
•
53% in ‘financial difficulties’ currently (73% for in/out work)
•
10% had credit card debt (17% in/out work); 14% overdrawn
•
28% in rent arrears; 50% for those in/out of work
•
10% have NOSP; 8% had been evicted from a previous tenancy
•
Other debt:
– Water (22%)
– Council Tax (21%)
– Fuel (13%)
– All higher among in/out work group
Baseline indicators for beneficiaries –
Money matters
•
83% receiving benefits / tax credits (92% in / out work)
•
Most common are JSA (66%) and HB (59%)
•
83% have bank account (national average 95%); 7% had contents
insurance
•
6% credit union members (10% in/out work group)
•
39% have outstanding loans inc. from banks (13% from payday
lenders, pawnbrokers, home credit agencies)
•
1% from unlicensed lenders / loan sharks
•
16% had (no interest) loans from family, friends
•
20% had social fund loans
Baseline indicators for landlords
•
Average rent arrears 3.8%;
•
6.3% tenants in arrears of eight weeks or over
•
Average arrears per tenant in arrears £268
•
Average collection rate 98.7% (compared to 99.3% benchmark)
•
Average time short term voids vacant 7.5 weeks
•
12% tenancies had NOSPs / NSPs taken out over last year
•
2% tenancies had had PO proceedings taken over last year
•
Arrears management, PO and eviction proceedings took an
average of 6.1% staff time (all staff)
•
91% landlords carrying out additional benefits, debt management and
related advice / training outside IFC
•
74% landlords providing other FI activities, products or services (e.g.
affordable loans, contents insurance, work with credit unions
Impact of IFC on beneficiaries… money matters
Impact of IFC on beneficiaries … confidence
Thank you
Danny Friedman, Cobweb Consulting
[email protected]
www.cobwebconsulting.com