The Skipton Building Society is now offering face-to-face financial advice, following regulatory approval being granted to integrate Skipton Financial Services Ltd (SFS), its wholly owned financial advice subsidiary, into Skipton Building Society.

As a result, the building society now offers pension and retirement planning, inheritance tax planning, and investment planning services. Skipton offers ‘restricted’ financial advice, giving customers access to over 3,000 funds from over 70 providers.

The mutual has already launched a digital life goals tool on skipton.co.uk/life-goals-tool to help customers resolve common financial planning queries. By inputting what they want to save for, how much they can afford to save, and when they want to have their savings by, the new tool produces a bespoke summary complete with next steps to achieve their goal. Skipton’s life goals tool then produces a personalised report for people to download which includes a reference number, which then can use if they want advice from the Skipton.

David Cutter (pictured), Skipton Building Society’s group chief executive, said: “Today marks a significant day for Skipton as we respond to a growing need on the high street for accessible financial advice. Many providers have withdrawn from this area completely, and others will only see people with significant sums of money to invest.  Skipton, the UK’s fourth largest building society, now offers financial advice in one place, for the mass market.

“The past year has seen radical changes made to the pensions arena, which has left a generation of people in need of somewhere to turn to make sense of everything. There’s an even greater need for people to receive not only mortgage and saving support, but also investment and pensions advice, something that so few other firms are capable or willing to deliver on the high street to the mass market. We are both capable and willing. And in integrating our financial advice business into the building society we are now able to better meet the needs of our customers, to support them with all their financial planning needs, and to develop our digital and online offering for them – such as our new life goals tool.”