Pro bono is a Latin phrase translated into English as "for the good".
It is also the term given to the free work done by many professionals to help those who cannot afford to pay for their help, whether legal, medical or financial.
Pro bono work calls upon the special expertise and training an individual has, and with a huge gap in the financial knowledge and resilience of millions of people in Britain, the importance of an initiative that helps to bring advice to those most in need — and most unable to pay for it — is paramount.
There is plenty of pro bono work being carried out by people in the UK financial services profession, and it not only benefits those they are helping but also helps advisers with their own health and wellbeing.
But it is often done outside of the public eye — and while this is understandable, it is also good to provide best-practice examples of how financial advisers can make pro bono work part of their working practice, and demonstrate the benefits of doing so to the advice firm.
Financial education
The Personal Finance Society has often put its collective weight behind pro bono initiatives, including ones to help close the gender pension/protection gap.
But perhaps its most pressing work is in financial education.
The PFS's My Personal Finance Skills programme offers schools free workshops covering elements of financial education to schools, with themes relevant to students' life stage.
Themes include:
- Staying safe from financial scams
- My future finances
- Understanding your first payslip
- Understanding attitude to risk and how that impacts decision-making
There have been hundreds of advisers giving up their time to help provide financial education to young people — as reported by FTAdviser in 2020, more than 900 members of the PFS had joined its initiative to help educate students about money.
Jo Connolly works for PFS member, The Compliance Partnership, as a director. Connolly donates her skills, time and expertise to the education champions initiative, where she presents personal finance skills workshops to pupils and students in schools and colleges in the UK.
She says the pro bono educational work she provides to schools and colleges is beneficial to herself and the wider good.
She explains: “I get a tremendous feeling of well-being for myself — I am able to connect with a whole class of pupils and get them thinking about finance as part of their life."
Connolly also says her work can help impact the younger generation to encourage them more holistically about their wants and needs and how to achieve these, not necessarily now, but sometimes more gradually.
Doing the right thing
Kathryn Knowles is founder and CEO of Cura Financial Services, an insurance brokerage firm for people who would otherwise find it difficult to get insurance cover, usually because of disability or illness.
In addition to year-round charity work, Knowles and Cura provide pro bono educational materials to charities to “help their members understand the insurance world”.
