Download Sharon Collard Professor of Personal Finance Capability and Chair

Sharon Collard
Professor of Personal Finance Capability and Chair of the True Potential Centre
for the Public Understanding of Finance, The Open University Business School
Sharon joined The Open University in May 2014 as Professor of
Personal Finance Capability and as Chair of the True Potential Centre
for the Public Understanding of Finance (True Potential PUFin). She is
responsible for True Potential PUFin’s cross-disciplinary research
programme which aims to expand the understanding of personal finance
capability through innovative, high-quality research.
Her background is social policy and she brings to the Centre 16 years’
experience of policy-focused social research on personal finance
conducted for funders including the financial services industry,
government departments and charitable foundations. She has used
empirical social research to understand individual and household
financial management; financial decision-making; consumer credit use; problem debt and the use
of debt advice services; and pensions and savings.
Sharon’s research interests include the relationships between financial literacy, financial
capability and financial inclusion, and what these mean for policy and practice. She is also
interested in what the limits are of personal finance capability and what role should regulators, the
market or non-profit actors play to achieve better outcomes for consumers, as well as the links
between personal finance capability, mental wellbeing and mental capacity. She is dedicated to
establishing what can work in terms of improving personal finance capability, working hard to
ensure that social research helps inform policy and practice. She is currently a member of The
Centre for Social Justice Serious Debt Working Group, The Money Advice Service’s Research
and Evaluation Group, as well as other industry related steering groups.
Sharon previously held roles at the University of Bristol’s Personal Finance Research Centre,
including a 4 year post as Director.