Money Advice Service

Now Money Helper

Strategic Mixed-Methods Research and Service Design Case Study

Transforming homebuying guidance through strategic research, service design and industry collaboration. Created the UK's #1 mortgage affordability tool that continues to serve homebuyers today.

At A Glance

Organisation: Money Advice Service (MAS) (now MoneyHelper), FCA-regulated public body
Role: Strategic Research & Proposition Lead (full-time)
Focus: Home Buying service, building financial resilience
Scope: Strategic research, service design and partnership building - generated insights, defined propositions, built industry relationships and established collaborative delivery frameworks that transformed both internal ways of working and user-facing tools and content
Methods: Mixed-methods research, service design research, journey mapping, co-creation
Standards: GDS Digital by Default compliance, accessibility, and ethical research practices
Impact: 100% traffic uplift, 750k monthly users in a month (organic only), approach replicated across Pensions (now Pension Wise)
Outcome: Tools and services utilised by national bodies, partners and government

Leadership and Influence

New proposition. United teams. Industry partnerships rebuilt.

Context and Business Challenge

Fractured stakeholder relationships across industry bodies, debt charities and regulators, required alignment to validate approach and secure adoption.

Siloed internal organisation with 6 teams across 3 directorships needed cross-functional matrix leadership and collaborative working.

Static information provision insufficient for complex home-buying decisions - users spent just 12 minutes evaluating properties despite lifetime financial consequences. National public service credibility required tools to improve real-world decision-making around affordability and resilience.

Strategic Framing

Established industry working group to validate approach and secure adoption from key stakeholders.

Implemented behaviour change methodology to transform service design, building evidence base across seven research domains before defining solutions.

Created reusable patterns scaling through partners (CML, BSA) whilst ensuring GDS framework compliance for accessibility and public value.

Conducted user research establishing decision-making needs, journey mapping across the home-buying process, and developed service design patterns for affordability tools. Testing and iteration with real users informed all solutions.

Framework replicated for pensions, care and debt journeys. Secured buy-in across 3 directorships whilst rebuilding fractured external relationships through evidence rather than assumption.

Strategic Approach

Evidence before solutions

This work followed a structured, research-led approach - moving from understanding complex financial behaviour to shaping services and tools.

Research combined user insight, market analysis and technical financial understanding, to guide service design decisions grounded in real behaviour and feasible within public-sector constraints.

Why this mattered: products, content and tools were shaped around real user needs, aligned to GDS standards, and distributed through key industry partners including Rightmove, Zoopla and Mumsnet

Research and Discovery

Understanding the whole system, not just the user

Research and discovery built a complete picture of the homebuying system, combining industry analysis, behavioural economics, user research and technical evaluation of existing tools and services.

Insights were gathered across multiple domains and synthesised to understand how people made high-risk financial decisions under pressure - grounding service design not just in what users did, but in why decisions broke down and where intervention could most effectively improve outcomes.

Insights and Opportunities

From one-size-fits-all to personalised decision support

Research revealed people approached home-buying with significantly different levels of confidence, anxiety, time pressure, knowledge and risk tolerance, alongside widespread misunderstanding of interest rates and affordability.

Three distinct behavioural personas emerged, each with different motivations, barriers and emotional pain points. Isolated calculators and content couldn't resolve systemic confusion - decision support needed embedding within a coherent journey, with tailored content and reassurance at the right moments for each persona.

Analysis revealed where journeys broke down, where behaviour change support was missing, and where partnership opportunities could extend reach.

Three Buyer Types

Experience Map and Service Design

Research made visible. Decisions made easier

The journey map translated research insights into a coherent, end-to-end service model - bringing together user behaviour, emotional states, information needs, tools, content and third-party interactions into a single integrated view.

It surfaced critical moments where buyer confidence dropped, decisions stalled and misunderstandings created financial risk - showing precisely where guidance would have maximum impact.

Beyond supporting users, the journey model became a shared blueprint for other propositions, aligning cross-functional teams around journey stages, clarifying ownership and prioritising work in a GDS-aligned, user-centred way.

The result: a service designed as an integrated system with new tools to serve user needs more effectively.

The Change Challenge

Transforming the Money Advice Service Home Buying proposition required change at two levels: reshaping how the organisation worked internally, and re-thinking how users experienced home buying guidance.

This created lasting impact that survived an organisational name change and re focus, and continues to serve UK homebuyers.

Change and Impact

Impact

Organic traffic 156% increase in engagement (750k uniques in one month)
No.1 ranked Google tool for mortgage affordability within two months
Industry Recognition Tool demonstrated at Council of Mortgage Lenders conference
Industry relationships re-established
Key new partnership syndications (Rightmove, Zoopla, Mumsnet)
Framework reused to create Pension Wise

Lasting change

12 Years of Sustained Impact

The affordability calculator remains the #1 non-sponsored Google result for "mortgage affordability" today.

The framework survived the merger into MoneyHelper and continues to serve UK homebuyers.

The collaborative delivery approach became the template for subsequent major projects across government financial guidance.

And the methodology drove the foundations for the Government Pension Wise scheme.

This case study demonstrates the transformational impact possible when evidence-based strategic research is implemented with organisational commitment and stakeholder alignment.