Visit West consists of three Bristol Business Improvement Districts – Bristol City Centre BID, Redcliffe & Temple BID, and Broadmead BID – and the regional Local Visitor Economy Partnership (LVEP), between them representing thousands of businesses.  The organisation is a proud member of the Bristol Financial Resilience Action Group. 

As part of the Bristol Financial Resilience Action Group, Hargreaves Lansdown is providing free financial education resources, webinars and networking for organisations that care about the financial wellbeing of their employees. After 12 months, they are looking for new signatories to join the existing 18 companies that they are working with. These include Brunel Care, We The Curious, Aviva and Clarke Bond to name a few.

Over the past year, Hargreaves Lansdown has led the Bristol Financial Resilience Action Group, a free initiative that brings together employers, from a variety of industries across the city, to work towards a shared vision and mission of ensuring the community they exist in thrives. The aim is to drive up the financial resilience of Bristolians by providing employers with the tools they need to help their employees who are struggling financially, or provide the opportunity for those employees who are curious to learn how to set up their future finances for success.

The work stems from Hargreaves Lansdown’s leading research into Financial Resilience, the Savings and Resilience Barometer. This analysis scores households up and down the country for their financial resilience across five key areas: controlling their debt, protecting their family, rainy day savings, planning for later life, and investing to make more of their money.  The latest report shows that there is room for improvement for Bristol in relation to financial resilience.

 Through the initiative, Hargreaves Lansdown hope to encourage employers to sign up to 3 commitments through the action group:

1. 1. 1. Financial resilience webinars: a free course of 12 webinars (one per month) mapped to the 5 to thrive financial resilience blueprint. Topics include; understanding debt, saving for a rainy day, how to boost your pension, and stock market ups and downs explained.
      2. A set of 6 internal initiatives: a series of recommended aspirational initiatives that employers implement if they do not do so already. These include incentivising pension contributions to 12%, sorting payroll errors within one week, and increasing sick pay above statutory minimum.
      3. Financial education resources for employees: education resources for employees:free financial education guides created by Hargreaves Lansdown aligned to the course for distribution amongst colleagues

Hargreaves Lansdown is looking to host a lunch and learn session for any interested businesses. To learn more about the scheme or gain access to the new webinar series, please email martha.girling@hl.co.uk