Speaking at a seminar on the issue hosted by The Giving Campaign, Stephen Ainger, chief executive of the Charities Aid Foundation said that such products could help address the disparity between Charitable giving and personal wealth. Pointing to the failure of donations to keep pace with the rise in GDP over the past ten years, he said: "We have to face the fact that for all our efforts, we have not faced that challenge."

Charitable financial products would be well placed to engage the "mass affluent", people who have £30,000 to £200,000 in liquid assets, and who, despite this, give proportionately less of their income to charities than poorer donors. "There are now 5.1 million," Aigner pointed out. "That gives an indication of the market for charity financial products." The audience also heard new research from The Giving Campaign that showed the proportion of financial services professionals giving advice to clients about charitable donations was up to 25% from 18% two years ago.

Despite this, Brian Thomas, the man chairing The Giving Campaign's working party on charity financial products, admitted that progress had been slowed by financial services firms' reluctance to develop new products. The campaign was "optimistic but also realistic about timescale," he said, "and there is still the need for one or two pioneers to take the lead". Nevertheless, the campaign hopes some products will be launched in the next six months, and CAF will take over the work in this area when The Giving Campaign winds up in June.

Providing the keynote speech at the event, DTI minister with responsibility for corporate social responsibility, Stephen Timms, said he sensed that there could be "really important gains" for both the financial services sector and charities from a closer relationship. "I particularly hope that for the kind of ideas we are talking about this morning, this will be the beginning," he said.