The Personal Finance Society is planning to publish quarterly reports for members to enable them to better hold the organisation to account, CEO Donald MacIntyre has pledged. 

Mr MacIntyre, interim CEO, outlined his plans to give members more information and improve transparency at an officers' meeting held the day before before the 2023 National PFS Conference which took place yesterday.

The PFS has been hit by complaints of a lack of transparency over its finances which have come in for heavy criticism.

The OurPFS campaign group of PFS members has recently sent an open letter to the PFS board asking for an explanation of what it calls a 'missing' £10m in the accounts it believes is being used by parent body the Chartered Insurance Institute.

Mr MacIntyre said to improve member engagement the PFS planned to produce quarterly updates for members, including updates on financial matters, to improve transparency and to help members engage better with the 40,000 member professional body.

He said: "We are planning to publish a quarterly 'score card' to allow officers (local officials) to hold us to account and it will include financial figures. It will help members better understand what we are doing and allow them to ask questions and review our performance."

He said the report was also likely to be made public to show the PFS had nothing to hide. There is no indication yet on when the quarterly reports might be launched

Mr MacIntyre told Financial Planning Today at the National Conference at the ICC in Newport, Wales, that he was delighted with the response from officers to his report initiative and he also hailed the conference as showing a "profession on the move." The conference attracted nearly 1,000 attendees despite poor weather.

The most recently PFS annual report revealed that the PFS was hit by soaring costs in 2022 as it spent heavily on legal and consultancy fees during its row with parent body the Chartered Insurance Institute.

Legal and consultancy costs, including extra public relations support, resulted in bills totalling £2.2m, the lion’s share of a £3.2m rise in operating expenses during the year.

Total operating expenses at the PFS in 2022 rose to £7.99m and pre-tax profit for the year fell from £3.39m to £1.74m.

There was a significant increase in legal fees (£850,000 in 2022) and consulting costs such as public relations (£1.35m in 2022) during the row with CII. Membership revenue also fell slightly although it picked up later in the year.

PFS revenue for 2022 was £9.76m, down £1.62m on 2021 (£8.14m).

Despite the drop in profit and higher costs the PFS ended the year with 40,032 members, an increase of 658 compared to 2021. There are now 7,980 Chartered Financial Planners, a rise of 337 during the year and 209 members became Fellows in the year pushing the total to 3,827.

In its Annual Report the PFS defended the extra costs as being necessary to help the PFS board during a turbulent time.