Our philosophy at Sterling Advice is simple, to put the service back into financial services.

With the growing national debt level currently estimated for personal debt at the end of January 2010 standing at £1,463bn, more and more people are having to turn to professional financial solutions companies for advice on how to regain control of their finances.

Here are some worrying statistics relating to our nations current financial state:

9,500  people with new debt problems dealt with by CAB each day
£58,040 average household debt
£187m personal interest paid in UK daily
every 11.4 minutes a property is repossessed
1,841 people made redundant every day
every 3.69 minutes someone will be declared insolvent or bankrupt
£384,900,000 daily increase in Government national debt (PSDN)

The unfortunate knock on effect of these statistics has been the emergence of hundreds of debt solution companies up and down the country. In such a potentially lucrative market place for the fee charging solution providers the emphasis appears to have shifted from the service to their clients to the focus on profits for themselves. Many clients report that the communication with their solution provider is poor to say the least once their initial fees have been paid and that their monthly service charge appears to be very high for the actual level of assistance they receive.

The primary service offered by these solution providers is known as a debt management program or DMP. In essence this is a very simple solution, the client effectively works out what is left in reserve once they have paid for all their essential living expenditure and offers this to their creditors if they cannot meet their original contractual commitment. The intervention of a fee charging debt solution provider effectively means that they would carry out the administration of the debt for the client and charge them a monthly fee for this service. In essence they will work out the clients disposable income for them, send authority to the creditors to speak on the clients behalf and then pay the creditors on a pro rata basis once they have taken their fee.

The issue with a number of these debt solution providers is the level of their initial and ongoing charges and more importantly the assurances that are made to the client regarding their service. Many clients enter into these programmes with assurances that with the intervention of their solution provider that all interest and charges will be frozen immediately and that correspondence and telephone calls from the creditors will cease. They believe therefore that although they are making reduced payments to their creditors that it is at least coming directly off the capital that is owed rather than covering fees and charges, however in the majority of cases this is simply untrue.

Most clients still need to find a solution to their liabilities and at Sterling Advice we aim to offer clear concise advice and realistically priced solutions to a clients specific situation and circumstances.