Chris Fitch

Vulnerability Lead Consultant, Money Advice Trust

Chris has led a programme of award-winning research and intervention work on financial services, financial difficulty and vulnerability since 2006. 

He is Vulnerability Lead at the Money Advice Trust and a Research Fellow at the Personal Finance Research Centre, University of Bristol.  Previously he was Head of Policy and Research Fellow at the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

The programme that Chris leads aims to result in outputs which are ‘short on the obvious, and long on the practical’ – and with colleagues, he has written practical guidance for firms and staff on both effectively working with customers who are in vulnerable situations, and also looking after their own wellbeing and working environment following such contact.

In 2017, Chris was named in Credit Strategy’s Top 50 influencers in the creditor sector, and in 2015 he received the Martin Williams award for contribution to the UK credit industry (awarded each year by Credit Today) for the programme’s work on mental health, vulnerability, and financial services.

Colin Trend

Lead Trainer, Money Advice Trust

Colin Trend has a wealth of experience in the finance and debt sectors; from roles with private, public and voluntary organisations. He has tutored with the Money Advice Trust since 2007 and works directly with a variety of creditor firms.

Colin is the lead tutor with the Money Advice Trust on their vulnerability programme, assisting both in the UK and overseas. With Chris Fitch, he co-authored the Trust’s vulnerability guidance for advice agencies, launched by the charity with the backing of a range of organisations across the advice sector in June 2016.

Ian Phillips

Vulnerability Expert, Money Advice Trust

Ian brings expertise amassed over more than 20 years in the Financial Services industry. Unlike many of his peers, his experience has not only been built up in Head Office roles, but Ian has practical, day to day experience of dealing with the needs of all types of customer in various scenarios as customer account manager, branch manager, mortgage adviser and financial planning manager.

The ability to take this first-hand experience and apply it to the “bigger picture” saw Ian spend the last 12 years in a number of leadership roles at Lloyds Banking Group. He spent the first four years engaged in product and proposition design and management for the Scottish Widows brand, before taking on the challenge of engaging directly with Regulators over a large scale conduct enforcement action and designing and embedding a wholesale overhaul of outcome testing that has gone to become the long term approach for the UK’s biggest banking group, across all products and services, as well as being replicated by a number of competitor firms.

Most recently, Ian led a team providing independent advice and challenge to the front line business, designed to interpret Regulatory policy, principles and future expectation and support the Group in addressing risks before they crystallised for customers. Part of this remit saw him lead on overseeing design and embedding of the Group’s Customer Vulnerability strategy, across all areas of the business and encompassing, amongst other things; product and process design, customer treatments, policy, training, governance and monitoring and evaluation.

During his time leading on Vulnerability, Ian graduated from the first cohort of the UK Finance Academy, so has first hand experience of the benefit delegates can derive from the programme. Part of the ethos of the academy is to see previous delegates return in a contributory capacity and in line with that, together with feedback from facilitators and peers alike on his contribution, Ian was asked to return as co-lead from the start of Cohort Three.  

At the same time, Ian has left the Head Office world at LBG and returned to what he loves best - meeting customer needs as Director of his own Commercial Finance brokerage