Trustfolio Wins IMA Award for ‘game-changing’ debt-tech

Debt-tech innovators Trustfolio has taken home the Institute of Money Advisers (IMA) Innovation and Impact Award for its Debt Adviser Support Portal (DASP).

DASP launched in 2021 for non-profit debt advice agencies and is currently used by 1,200 debt advisers across 190 organisations. It is designed to enable advisers to reach the point of advice as quickly as possible and was shaped off the back of feedback from advisers, who were in need of a solution to make their casework more efficient.

And one advocate of DASP has described the Trustfolio technology as something of a “gamechanger” for their organisation. It was this supporting statement, along with many others, that contributed to the win.

Claire Daniels, operations support manager for Community Money Advice (CMA) said:

“For CMA centres, the work of Trustfolio has been a game changer and after the introduction of debt relief orders, the single most useful tool to help advisers help clients get free from debt quicker.

Trustfolio are all about making the lives of debt advisers easier so that they can see more clients, help them quickly with less admin work and facilitate more direct support time. They have taken two of the historically most time-consuming aspects of delivering debt advice and turned the process into minutes instead of hours and days.

The day CMA centres started using the credit report tool was the day that every centre using it, said debt advice changed for them. A process that took up to a week was suddenly done in 30 seconds and with the addition of account numbers, clients didn’t have to spend days rooting round for paperwork to find the necessary references.”

90% of users are small and community based DASP provides client credit reports from multiple providers, digital bank statements and a range of useful advice resources. The web-based system can be used in any advice setting and data can be collected in triage to suite all styles of advice delivery. In 2022/23, advisers accessed 50,820 credit reports across two credit reference agencies, indicating approximately 25,410 clients have benefited from this service.

In addition, 90 per cent of current DASP users are smaller, local community-based advice services, such as Citizens Advice, food banks or CMA centres. Costs to access are kept low and clients are not tied into contracts to reflect this ethos.

Ryan Hayes, chief operating officer - advice sector at Trustfolio, commented:

“We are delighted to have taken home this IMA Award, which reflects the team’s hard work and dedication to ensuring efficient debt advice and support is as accessible as possible. Reduced waiting times means more available appointments and improved client outcomes, along with the improved accuracy of data.

We’d like to thank all our users who have supported us by using our debt-tech and also for the lovely supporting statements which contributed to our win and show how we strive to make advisers’ lives easier too. Our innovative platform positively impacts the lives of those in debt and we look forward to more advisers joining us throughout 2023 and beyond.”