January is a month of cold weather, dark mornings, and possible failure in our New Year resolutions, which combine to create a perfect recipe for ‘January Blues’. To understand the cause of such blues, Debt Talk host Ripon Ray invited three guests from the mental and debt, financial inclusion, and open banking sectors.

Charlene Marks, Head of Mental & Debt Advice at Mental Health UK, confessed that there is a genuine reason for feeling gloomy this month: our finances have taken a beating during the festive period and the New Year. She explained that there is a commercial reason for calling it and it is linked with travel agents utilising the period to encourage the sale of travel abroad. There are vulnerable communities seeking advice from her organisation, and many alike are impacted by severe mental health, depression, bipolar disorder and other mental health issues and debt are intertwined, as she explained eloquently.

Gareth Evans, founder of Cash Perks, sees this period as a new period of opportunity. He developed a product that helps transfer funds to anyone in the UK via SMS message and allows cash instantly without needing a card or bank account if they are financially struggling. But the question for him is where to look when you need support. Local councils are a great point of start with since his product assists many councils in transferring funds to struggling communities, either if they are suffering from January Blues or otherwise.

Tope Akande, co-founder of Bucks Trybe, a product designed for immigrants in the UK, emphasised that marginalised communities and young British adults are excluded from mainstream lending. He states that building their credit record by addressing non-conventional transactions—such as the Bank of 'Mums and Dads'—with open banking would assist communities with a better future in the financial market and access to credit.

Debt Talk panel members have also provided TOP TIPS listeners to think of strategies to ease the pressure of January Blues.

My next podcast is on: 'Credit ratings whilst indebted’.