2004

In 2004 we were established as a subsidiary of the Severn Trent Trust Fund, a charity with over 23 years’ experience in helping people who find themselves in challenging circumstances and in need of help.

2013

Keen to raise the bar , we set up our in-house dedicated debt advice service in 2013, enabling us to broaden our range of activities even further. We also began supporting people to meet their needs for affordable warmth and other energy services, addressing some of the issues and challenges associated with fuel poverty.

2015

In 2015 we set ourselves a vision to help 2 million people in hardship by 2020 with our expert advice and support. Our casework and partnerships began to take off and we started offering households water and energy efficiency advice alongside income maximisation services at scale.

2016

Since 2016, we have supplied the NHS with welfare and wellbeing services. Auriga began delivering advice and wellbeing services to people being treated in hospital, enabling medical teams to more effectively support patients. This taught us to look at things differently; we started reaching new groups and not only reducing hardship, but increasing life satisfaction, general health and wellbeing.

Providing the NHS with advice services has been one of our most positive achievements to celebrate. We’ve taken every opportunity to share insights from our evaluation with the UK’s Money Advice Service and exchange ideas about advice excellence in a healthcare setting.

2017

In 2017 we undertook research and analysis of the three highly respected water trust funds we manage, to showcase the number of people the charities had reached, the difference we made to people, and how much money was spent to do that. With over 13,000 customers directly supported each year, the results showed 82% of grant recipients were able to pay future water charges. They said the schemes made a huge impact on their lives and the study revealed support led to significant improvements in health, housing, employment and family relationships.

2019

A year earlier than planned, in 2019, we successfully met our company vision to help 2 million people in hardship. That’s the number of people we’ve helped since 1997 with free, impartial, advice and assistance to reduce their financial difficulty. An outstanding achievement, evidencing our dedication to reach our goals.

2020

In 2020 we launched our brand-new target – to help more than 3 million households by 2030 who are in vulnerable circumstances and in need of support.

We also started administering the British Gas Energy Trust.

This was all alongside a smooth transition to total home working before the Coronavirus lockdown was announced. Our team’s hard work during this period meant there was no impact to our customer service throughout the year.

2021

In 2021 we experienced extraordinary growth – tripling our client base, actively bringing new stars to the team, and helping over 1,700 people on a daily basis.

This brought us well on our way to hitting our target of 3 million healthy homes by 2030.

We also created our consumer-facing website, Ask Bill. It creates an easily accessible avenue for Auriga’s expert knowledge of the utility sector and financial support, providing advice, handy hints and tips to save money, and signposts to further assistance for the general public.

2022

In 2022, Jill Wheeler took the helm as our new CEO. David Woakes and Clare Fleming also joined our Executive Management Team as Client Solutions Director and People Director.

Following the cost of living crisis, we continued to experience an increased demand in our services, providing specialist advice and support on behalf of our partners to vulnerable and affordability challenged consumers across the UK.

We also worked to improve efficiency across our organisation, investing in our most important asset – our people.