The under fire Money Advice Service has reported "record numbers" of users – with over ten million contacts from customers in the first half of 2014/15.

The April to September figures, released this week, cover the period since sweeping pension reforms were announced in the Budget. From July to September there were over 400,000 contacts each week.
Officials said MAS, which has faced heavy criticism from the Treasury Select Committee over the last year, is on target to receive more than 20million customer contacts in the year to March 2015.

{desktop}{/desktop}{mobile}{/mobile}

Despite being dropped as a retirement guidance service provider having initially been named, MAS reported high satisfaction - with 90% of customers responding to an independent market research survey (11,396 people) saying they will revisit and 87% saying they would recommend it.
The figures also showed that more than 1.5m individual "money management actions" were taken by customers after they had used the service in the period April-June.
The service surveyed customers approximately 6-10 weeks after they had used it to find out what they had done as a result: over one million actions had been taken in the area of budgeting - for example people shopping around for the best deal and borrowing only what they can repay on time.
In the first half of the year, almost 100,000 free debt advice sessions funded by the service were provided to people across the UK. In the full year 2014/15, 237,500 people are expected to be helped, up from 175,000 in 2013/14.
Caroline Rookes, chief executive of the Money Advice Service said: "We are pleased that our performance figures suggest that many people are using our tools to help them budget and make better-informed decisions before committing themselves.
"We've also made great progress in building and developing partnerships this quarter – for example, with our new debt advice grant agreements, with partners in the commercial and voluntary sectors, and with the financial capability strategy.
"No one organisation can change the UK's money habits on its own, so it's really encouraging to see that so many organisations are pulling together to achieve this goal."

Get FREE daily news summaries direct to your inbox. Sign up on the homepage now.

Follow us on Twitter and get frequent news alerts @FPM_online.

Or follow Editor Kevin O'Donnell - @FPM_Kevin or staff writer James Nadal - @FPM_James.

For the latest Sipp, SSAS and retirement news visit our sister news site www.sippsprofessional.co.uk and on Twitter @SippsPro.