The UK’s Money Advice Service: Edu-regulating Consumer Decision-making

The UK's Money Advice Service provides financial information, education and advice to consumers to help them navigate the complexities of the financial services market. As an edu-regulatory measure, it seeks to build consumer financial resilience by improving their financial skills and financial behaviour. While its effectiveness in responding to some consumer behavioural problems is plausible, its ambition to strengthen consumer financial resilience is less feasible. This is mainly because consumer financial resilience does not merely depend on the financial information that consumers use to make financial decisions. But the fact that their resilience is heavily and principally contingent on the socio-economic and cultural context within which they live.