Financial advice clinics are permanent, stable services in which citizens can anonymously seek advice for their financial and debt issues. This also supports citizens to direct themselves to services at an early basis as opposed to a situation, which is already problematic. The uniqueness of the clinic also lies in its possibility to offer low-threshold services for citizens as the clinics offer diverse expertise from professionals from different organizations. Customers are guided to the right services for specific needs for more in-depth services. Furthermore, the professionals at the clinic continuously update and share their knowledge to one another regarding the services they provide. The service is based on minimal resources and the clinics do not require full work hours from the organizations involved. For instance, the clinic may be open for a short time period only, such as four hours a week. This also supports organizations to contribute to the service at a low threshold.

Since the proactive financial counselling project (2019-2021) in which the Financial advice clinics were initiated, the four years of existence of the clinics has included development work of the clinics into a stable, established practice. At the moment, the project includes evaluation of its practices with customer tracking and customer feedback as well as conceptualization, service promise statements and acknowledging customer segments. The clinic network at the national level should be strengthened and this is strongly based upon communication and marketing development to make the services better known. This also includes virtual service development.

The Financial advice clinics are based on strong collaboration and partnership between the government officials and civil society organizations of financial and debt counselling services, the National Enforcement Authority Finland, the Social Insurance Institution of Finland, social services and often also church social work and housing counselling, depending on the location.

The services provided by the Financial advice clinics are open to all citizens irrespective of background factors such as age, employment status or income level.

Regular customer tracking and collecting immediate customer feedback provides vital information on the impact of the service. Data on the motivation of customers to approach the clinic provide evidence of certain life events, which may have an effect on individual finances and debt, such as illness. Overall, the major reason for approaching the clinic is personal debt. Data also show that the service is provided for customers at an optimal stage: only approximately half of clinic customers have a non-payment record. Records also show that according to the time spent at the clinic, issues can be dealt rapidly: 49% of customers spend only 30 minutes at the clinic indicating that even with a short encounter, many issues can be resolved.

The main challenges related to the service implementation has been the fact that the service relies on organizations’ personnel and therefore illness and other reasons for absence may cause disruptions in service provision. A lack of personnel resources at the organizations may also cause challenges on the commitment they can make to the clinic services.

The global COVID-19 pandemic caused, naturally, many challenges and setbacks in the clinic services and procedures. However, the situation was turned from a setback to an advantage in implementing a hybrid solution to the clinic, a possibility which may have otherwise been unlikely.

The conditions for the success of the clinic relies on the commitment of organizations and their personnel on the practical implementation of the clinic services. However, the clinic implementation does not require major investments as it is easily organized and no fixed personnel resource allocations are made which also results in a light level of bureaucracy. Success of the clinic relies on mutual understanding of certain ground rules such as marketing and venue reservations which the clinic professionsl agree upon together. But above all, success requires on the cstrong ommitment of the employees working at the clinic who also have a strong urge to develop the important work being done at the clinic.

Similar solutions have been seen for other societally important and critical issues, one example being a kiosk supporting citizens’ mental health. Overall, early intervention and preventative work on individuals and householdhas significant effects also at the societal level.

The popularity and extensive development of the Financial advice clinic among citizens and professionals has been a positive surprise. A vital key for success in an innovation like this requires a network-based approach to the development of the innovation, including professionals from diverse fields and extensively throughout the nation. Commitment to the work promotes multiple advantages at the citizen, organizational and societal levels.