GFTU BGCM Minutes 2017

and I am going to just give Helen a couple of minutes just to follow on from

what I have said, if that is okay. (Applause)

HELEN ANDREWS: Thank you. I promise I will be very brief. Helen Andrews from

Lighthouse Financial Advice. Following on from what Mark has said, some of

you know may, probably more of you don’t, but in any case every one of you,

your members at some stage in their life, either themselves or their family, will

need financial advice in any of the areas Mark has already mentioned and the

big thing that they are going to be asking is, “Who can I trust? Where do I go to

for financial advice that is trustworthy, not available on the high street any more

and with all the bad press?” That is where we come in. They can trust us. We

deal with a lot of the trade unions. Within this room there is the Bakers Union,

Prospect, Unite, Unison, ASCL, ATL, USDAW, many, many unions. Apologies

to those I have left out, there are lots.

How can your members get access to us? This is the main thing. Every

member and their family member is entitled to an initial consultation at no

charge from us. That can be at home, which is where most people like it, it can

be at their workplace or if it suits them better they can have a pre-arranged

telephone appointment. There is no obligation on that consultation, both

parties can walk away afterwards. If, however, there turns out to be a piece of

work to be undertaken, depending on the length and complexity of the work, a

fee is discussed with the member upfront, what the fee might be, how they

might pay it and when everyone is happy that work then goes ahead, so it is

really as fair as fair as it can be.

I hope I have given you all one of these . In here , if you take this with you, you

have got everything you need to contact us or to distribute out to your reps on

site and your members. There is a leaflet that takes the member straight

through to the call centre, either by email or telephone appointment, and there

is another leaflet to tell you who to contact for your reps in different areas of the

country, because we also do workplace events. I have put in a couple of

invites of our most popular. One is a pre-retirement seminar and if any of you

run pre-retirement seminars yourself for your members and you need someone

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