In the third of our series of ‘Trustfolio Spotlights’ on key figures in the industry, we talked to Craig Simmons, Lead Consultant and Director at Clear Consultancy Services.
15 December 2023
Craig Simmons is Lead Consultant and Director at Clear Consultancy Services. In the third of Trustfolio’s Spotlight series, Craig finds himself in the ‘Trustfolio hot seat’.
Tell us a bit about yourself. What is your career background up until the point of setting up Clear Consultancy Services?
I was born and raised in Nottingham. I started out working in a bookmakers and then got a job for the local Council – they were both great roles and I got to meet a lot of interesting and diverse people. I’d always fancied living and working in London though and got a job for the Financial Services Authority (now called the FCA), before getting a role at the Money Advice Service (now called MaPS). You might note the name changes there. George Osbourne, the former Chancellor, decided to abolish both of the original versions of the organisations I joined within 6 months of getting the respective jobs. Either he’s not a fan of mine or I’m a kiss of death for organisations..!
It was at the FCA where I first came into touch with the debt advice sector, working closely with them as we rolled out the new Consumer Credit regulatory regime. At MaPS, I was the Head of Debt Advice Policy & Strategy and, as the name suggests, this involved a lot of partnership working with debt advice agencies but also with the creditor sector and other bodies with links to problem debt. There I was lucky to work with such a varied, passionate and interesting set of stakeholders in delivering the Standard Financial Statement, the UK Strategy for Financial Wellbeing and the significant uplift in funding we secured for debt advice services. In my time I also had two year-long secondments at HM Treasury, designing the Breathing Space policy, and at Money Advice Scotland in Glasgow, building its three-year strategy.
In November 2022, having left MaPS, I launched Clear Consultancy Services, a small consultancy firm which works across a few different sectors. I’m pleased that still involves the debt advice sector, but it has also brought me closer to sectors like health, local government and the lending community. As I think my working life to date demonstrates, I really enjoy getting to work with diverse and passionate people and running a consultancy firm is certainly enabling that!
Personally, things have gone full circle now, as I moved back to Nottingham in 2020. It’s great to be back and my wife and I have had a baby this year, so we are keeping busy!
What made you want to join the debt sector? Did you fall into it as a career or did you always want to empower people when it came to their finances?
It was a bit of both. By the time I was 18, I’d worked out I wanted to do something that made a positive difference for people but I didn’t really know in what way. The opportunity to work on the introduction of the Consumer Credit regime was fortunate timing really. The FCA was looking for people to work on it and I thought it sounded like it was going to be a really interesting project. Doing that gave me my first chance to work with consumers in debt, the debt advice sector and various consumer bodies.
Something just clicked for me and, while most of my colleagues went onto the next big innovation the FCA was delivering when the project completed, I decided to specialise in the debt advice regulation taking the job with the then Money Advice Service, which had a statutory role in coordinating the debt advice sector. In many ways, it’s a challenging area to work as you have such passionately held and often opposing views held by the various stakeholders but, honestly, I love it and it’s a field where we as a society need to make such urgent progress.
How did you end up on the Trustfolio debt-tech podcast?
I’ve known Lee, Peter and Lou for quite a few years now from the work I’ve mentioned above. They fit into that bracket I mention of being really passionate about what they are doing and, at Trustfolio, they want to make rapid progress collaboratively with the debt advice sector. As a result, I jumped at the chance to be on the podcast!
Why is it important for you to be involved with bodies like MALG and Severn Trent Trust Fund?
There are some of the more obvious things; I certainly believe giving up some time to charities and social purpose organisations is a good thing to do and both these bodies are giving me a chance to make a difference for people. Perhaps less obvious is that both these roles give me the chance to see things from different perspectives, be that from the consumers we help, the utility sector or the very varied membership of MALG. In my experience, it can sometimes be easy to become blinkered in your position and having these additional voluntary roles helps me try to have a more rounded view.
What do you think the future holds for the debt sector?
First and foremost, I think it has a busy period ahead! I fear we will continue to see the trend for more complex cases and clients with no obvious or immediate debt solution. I’ve no doubt however that the sector will rise to the challenges of increasing demand, a cost-of-living crisis and the aftershocks of the pandemic. I also think that the powers that be will increasingly recognise the value of the sector as a result of the period we have ahead of us and the impact the debt advice sector will have through it.
I certainly hope ahead of us we have a more solid and sustainable funding model for the sector, better ways to engage people with advice, deeper and more relevant insight into consumers which are used to improve services and a much better approach to how we attract and retain debt advisers. I also expect we’ll see more partnership working between debt advice agencies and other support services, as well as increasing use of technology to help debt advisers in the work they do.
Personally, what do you enjoy doing in your "spare time"?
Having a baby has certainly squeezed the available “spare time” I have to admit! Being a father has been amazing though!
I am a big football fan and I go to watch my team, Notts County, whenever time allows. We are having a very rare period of success so I am enjoying it as much as I can!
I also love cricket and travel. My wife and I just had a first holiday with our son and, while it was a slightly different pace to our usual, I’m pleased to report we are still talking and still have the travel bug!
If there were three dream people you'd want to get round the table to share your thoughts on the debt sector, debt-tech and how you think the sector needs to move forward, who would they be and why?
We probably don’t need 3 dream people to take the sector forward, although I recognise that takes all the fun out of this question! Almost all of the people we need are already around the various tables. We just need a stronger argument, a better plan and a bigger dollop of goodwill. If everyone got behind a well-coordinated strategy, I think the sector would fly.
Tell us when something hasn’t quite gone to plan at work (make us laugh!)
I’ve far too many career mistakes to choose from, so I’ll just go for my earliest career mistake. At sixth form, we had to arrange our own work experience placement. Believe it or not, my gran had just married a farmer and I arranged to work on the farm for a week, thinking it would be a nice easy option. I was sure he’d want to make a good early impression being new to the family. In reality, he got me up at 5:30am every morning to do 12 hours of hard manual labour, often involving shovelling brown stuff! Safe to say my lazy 17-year-old self, learnt a much needed lesson!
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