That was the conclusion drawn by MPs on the Treasury Committee, who launched a stinging attack on the Money Advice Service for their approach to spending money.
We have long been critics of the Money Advice Service.
It has an important role to play in society, made more important as the advice gap widens following the introduction of the Retail Distribution Review (RDR) last year, but has consistently failed to direct its budget to the right outcomes.
Instead, it wastes the vast majority of its £46.5m annual budget on frivolity including marketing.
This is money that could make a real difference to the financial lives of the most disadvantaged in society, yet is wasted on futile national advertising campaigns like the cringeworthy ‘what does Ma think?’ adverts.
The Treasury Committee reached the right conclusion in as much that the Money Advice Service “does not know what it is doing” in terms of the delivery of money advice.
They dismissed the Money Advice Service ‘business plan’ as “completely meaningless” and expressed “considerable unease” about the way in which money was being spent.
One MP was inclined to ask “what the hell” they were doing with all the money.
We know that the Treasury is planning to review the future of the Money Advice Service by the end of 2015, but in our opinion that is too late.
This is after all an organisation funded directly by regulated financial services firms, so indirectly by our customers, rather than by the taxpayer.
While the funding position of the Money Advice Service has improved somewhat in the last year, with a greater burden on debt providers to reflect the nature of the service delivery, it is still a shocking waste of our money and has a impact on what we must charge our customers in order to remain profitable.
Our solution? Shut it down, today.
Just as the banks have a fundamental cultural problem around greed which cannot be easily resolved, the Money Advice Service seems incapable of spending other people’s money in a responsible and sensible manner.
As much as we want to believe that Money Advice Service chief executive Caroline Rookes has what it takes to reform the organisation and slash its budget down to a reasonable level, we have seen no real evidence of this since she took up the position in January.
Come on, Caroline. Why not make a commitment today to reduce the MAS budget to a more sensible level (say, £5m a year) from 2014 and focus this entirely on helping the most financially vulnerable people in society?
Better yet, why not shut down the Money Advice Service today and reallocate part of its budget to the more effective Citizens Advice service, who no doubt would not blow a huge chunk of it on vanity television advertising.
We’re not holding our collective breath.
