The chief executive and 10 trustees of a financial wellbeing charity have reported being ousted “without any prior notice”.
Abrdn Financial Fairness Trust’s chief executive, Mubin Haq, was dismissed on 26 June alongside the 10 trustees, including chair David Norgrove.
On the same day, 10 new trustees were appointed, all of whom have affiliations with other organisations linked to the Aberdeen Group, including the Aberdeen Group Charitable Foundation.
Nine of the former trustees – including Norgrove, Daunt Books founder James Daunt and former MSP Jenny Marra – released a statement in response to their dismissal, which they described as being “without any prior notice” and added that it would lead to the charity “abruptly abandoning” its work.
Their statement reads: “The trust is one of the main independent funders of research work in areas such as pensions, taxation and the cost of living.
“The trust has existing grants totalling £3.6m and we urge Aberdeen Group plc to honour these commitments to the universities, think tanks and charities to whom they have been made.
“We regret the abrupt manner with which Aberdeen Group plc has dismissed the entire board of independent trustees and its executive when, as trustees, we would have welcomed a dialogue.
“Collectively, we have decades of experience in the corporate, charitable, government, academic and civil society fields. It is especially regrettable to be ending the valuable research and policy work conducted by the abrdn Financial Fairness Trust.”
‘Backward step’
The trust was established as an independent foundation using the unclaimed assets from the demutualisation of Standard Life in 2009, with former chancellor Alistair Darling as its founding chair, before being incorporated into what is now the Aberdeen Group years later.
Its focus has been to fund research into improving the financial security of those on low-to-middle incomes, and awarded grants of approximately £3m each year.
At the time of writing, the trust’s website has been made unavailable, while no posts have been made to its social media accounts since 27 June.
The Scotland-registered charity, which works across the UK, recorded a deficit in its most recently filed accounts for the financial year ending 31 December 2023, with an income of over £2.8m and expenditure of £3.6m.
Commenting on the trustees’ and CEO’s exits, Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said: “The Financial Fairness Trust has, in a short period, become a crucial part of the UK's research funding infrastructure focussed on improving the financial security of those on lower incomes.
“Any withdrawal from this role would, by reducing research capacity, be a backward step for improving living standards in this country.”
A spokesperson for the Aberdeen Group said: “This is a natural evolution in the work of the trust, moving from focusing on funding research to a model that aims to have a more direct and tangible impact building charity partnerships and supporting communities.
“With the gap between the need for people to build financial resilience and the support available to help them do so only growing, we believe that the trust can play an important role in helping address the challenge.”
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