Course Outline:

The impacts of psychological and physical addictions are issues that money advisers encounter on a regular basis. These are patterns of behaviour involving actions or spending that the client feels they have no control over. For example, smoking, alcohol, substances, gambling, and shopping.

This course takes a constructive view of working with clients, through recognising how addition impacts the client and the client adviser relationship. Whilst it cannot offer a “magic wand” answer, it works from the premise that the role of a money adviser is to enable and support a client in considering taking appropriate steps to either break the addiction or to manage their condition.

Learning Objectives:

By the end of this course, you will be able to:

• Outline what addiction is – including the root causes
• Describe how conditions related to addictive behaviours fall within both the Equality Act 2010 and FCA Handbook
• Identify how we can argue a case for a client either having a debt written off or the addiction recognised as part of a repayment plan
• Explain how debt arising from addictions are treated in insolvency
• Assess what the limits of our intervention are and what practical steps we can take as advisers

Level: Specialist

CPD: 4.5 Hours

Duration: One day