New Resident Money Specialist in Newport, Wales

About the vacancy: We're looking for a proactive and customer-focused New Resident Money Specialist to support residents in building strong financial foundations from the start of their tenancy. In this role, you'll provide tailored money advice, helping residents maximise income, manage budgets, and access benefits, while preventing early-stage rent arrears. You'll manage a varied caseload, working closely with housing and income teams to deliver practical, person-centred support. Combining technical knowledge of welfare benefits and debt solutions with empathetic engagement, you'll play a key role in improving financial wellbeing, sustaining tenancies, and empowering residents to feel confident managing their finances.

Specifically, in the role you will:

• Pre-Tenancy & Move-In Support
  • Provide sound advice to housing colleagues and prospective residents (where appropriate) to assess financial readiness and affordability.
  • Provide tailored budgeting advice and set up payment arrangements for rent and service charges.
  • Help residents in preparing for the financial changes associated with moving home, including budgeting adjustments, utilities, and benefit applications.
  • Support residents to submit claims promptly and provide required documentation to minimise delays in entitlement.
  • Carry out income and expenditure assessments and develop realistic, sustainable budgets for new residents.
  • Offer guidance on debt prioritisation, rent as a priority payment, and signposting to additional debt advice agencies when necessary.
• Money Advice & Financial Wellbeing
  • Undertake financial risk assessments and deliver tailored specialist money advice, including budgeting, income maximisation, welfare benefits, and basic debt advice (signposting where debt advisory services are required).
  • Independently manage a caseload, prioritising complex cases requiring specialist knowledge or tailored financial solutions.
  • Support residents to access grants, Discretionary Housing Payments, and charitable funds.
  • Help residents establish sustainable repayment plans for unregulated debt where appropriate.
  • Maintain up-to-date knowledge of welfare reform, Universal Credit, Housing Benefit, debt options, and local/national support schemes.
  • Carry out detailed income and expenditure assessments and develop sustainable budgeting or repayment plans.
  • Ensure compliance with regulatory and professional standards of money advice professionals (e.g. FCA, GDPR etc).
• Preventing arrears in new tenancies
  • Monitor new resident accounts to identify payment risks and intervene promptly.
  • Work closely with Income Recovery Specialists to ensure seamless referral and escalation if arrears begin to develop.
  • Support residents to understand the consequences of non-payment and provide practical solutions to help them stay on track.
  • Deliver light-touch interventions for first-time missed payments, encouraging early communication and engagement.
• Income Maximisation
  • Identify opportunities to increase household income through benefits, employment, and energy savings.
  • Assist residents with benefit applications, Universal Credit claims, and appeals.
  • Prepare and submit benefit applications, mandatory reconsiderations, and supporting evidence on behalf of residents.
  • Support group sessions, workshops, or community-based financial capability activities as requested.
• Customer Engagement
  • Build positive relationships with residents, providing empathetic, proactive support to residents facing financial hardship.
  • Identify vulnerabilities and work collaboratively with internal teams and external agencies to sustain homes and ensure safeguarding and support needs are met.
  • Deliver a customer-focused service, engaging directly with residents to understand their individual circumstances and develop affordable, sustainable repayment solutions.
  • Carry out outbound contact via telephone, digital channels, letters, and home visits to maximise engagement with residents in or at risk of arrears.
  • Promote Hedyn's values and commitment to equity, diversity, inclusion, and customer empowerment.
• Compliance & Best Practice
  • Ensure all actions and advice comply with best practice, regulatory standards and Hedyn's policies.
  • Maintain accurate records on digital systems, updating case notes promptly with a focus on confidentiality and an awareness of GDPR.
  • Demonstrate safe working practices for self and others, in accordance with Hedyn's policies.
• Collaboration
  • Work closely with Income Recovery, Energy Advice, and Housing teams to deliver holistic support.
  • Build partnerships with external agencies, advice networks, and welfare organisations.
  • Work in direct partnership with Income Recovery Specialists to ensure residents at risk of falling into arrears have access to welfare, budgeting, employment, and energy advice as needed thus preventing arrears escalation.
  • Escalate high-risk or complex cases appropriately, working with safeguarding leads and specialist partners where necessary.
• Performance
  • Achieve key performance indicators for income maximisation, arrears reduction, and customer satisfaction.
  • Contribute to continuous service improvement initiatives, digital transformation projects, audits and process reviews.

Application Process: We require an application form to be completed for every role. We do not require recruitment agency support at this time - all speculative CV's will be treated as a direct application.

Your Hedyn, our comprehensive benefits package: We believe Hedyn is a great place to work and it's important to us that our people feel the same way. As well as offering varied and fulfilling careers, we want every colleague to feel appreciated. That means having the best possible benefits package, the flexibility to maintain a great work-life balance and the opportunity to achieve your full potential. We are still at the beginning of our journey. Join us to help shape it. We want you to be at your very best. Please feel free to let us know of any changes we can make at any point in the recruitment process that will help support your application. If you are looking for your next career challenge, seeking responsibility, and are passionate about delivering the best possible service, we'd love to hear from you.