The launch followed a pilot scheme between 2007 and 2009 and by 2019 it had 95 active MoneyPlanners. This was then extended to the Forces Moneyplan aimed at veterans and families of the armed forces.
In 2019 he launched a third pro bono programme providing financial education in schools.
"All of those are positive legacies that I leave behind in the PFS and I really hope that they continue to evolve them positively," he says.
Richards did an assessment of how much free time advisers tend to provide and concluded most were not even aware of the help they were giving to people pro bono.
"It wasn't uncommon for me to speak to advisers who've just spent half an hour on the phone with a consumer who rang up and really did not need full blown advice and the adviser gave them some direction on what they should do and where they should go," he says.
"I think there's a lot of that out there but not always necessarily documented. Advisers give millions of hours of free guidance every year, sometimes they just don't realise it."
carmen.reichman@ft.com
