Financial Inclusion Strategy

Headline findings

• The strategy is product-focused rather than person-centred, failing to disaggregate impact by gender, ethnicity, disability, employment status, age, and affordability—critical gaps for targeted intervention.
• Strategy development was structurally imbalanced: 16 industry representatives versus 4 consumer representatives on sub-committees, giving industry disproportionate influence over a strategy meant to constrain exclusionary practices.
• No clear accountability mechanisms, measurable outcomes, or enforcement powers exist; industry witnesses conceded outcome measurement mechanisms are currently absent and reliance on pilot work before target-setting suggests insufficient ambition.
• Critical areas omitted entirely: pensions (especially for the self-employed), digital inclusion, motor insurance, and savings resilience—cross-cutting issues affecting millions.
• Pilot evidence shows government-backed intervention works: HSBC-Shelter onboarded 8,000 homeless customers through improved ID verification, and the no-interest loan scheme demonstrates government guarantees enable industry to serve excluded populations.

Why it matters

Financial exclusion locks millions out of banking, credit, insurance, and pensions; a weakly enforced strategy risks embedding rather than solving systemic barriers that disproportionately harm ethnic minorities, elderly people, and women in economic abuse.

Tone arc

Started cooperative with independent experts identifying systemic structural failures (lack of data disaggregation, power imbalance in strategy development), shifted to mixed concern when industry witnesses acknowledged gaps but claimed comfort with the strategy's deliverability, raising MP anxiety that insufficient systemic change is being demanded.

Key witnesses

Sian Williams (Financial Inclusion Commission chair), Dr Eleni Karagiannaki (LSE), Mick McAteer (Financial Inclusion and Markets Centre), Jasjyot Singh OBE (Lloyds Banking Group), Alison Rayner (Nationwide Building Society), Professor Abdelhafid Benamraoui (University of Westminster), Helen Undy (consumer advocate), Michelle Highman (financial services expert)