Joanna is Chief Executive of Independent Age. She is also a director of UK Finance representing vulnerable consumers, Chair of the Advisory Panel at Birmingham University’s Centre on Household Assets and Savings Management and a Chartered Director. She was previously the CEO of Money Advice Trust, Executive Director at the British Bankers’ Association, and served on the Financial Inclusion Taskforce’s subgroup on credit and debt. Joanna was a founding member of the Fair4All Finance board, and served on the board between 2019-2025.

Over the past two decades, I’ve had the privilege of working at the heart of the UK’s financial inclusion movement, not least during my time as a non-executive director at Fair4All Finance. I’ve seen firsthand how determined, collaborative action can transform lives at scale.

We’ve made real progress over the years with life-changing initiatives, like the introduction of pensions auto-enrolment in 2012, and the roll-out of basic bank accounts across the UK in 2014. But as I look ahead, I see that financial inclusion still demands the same urgency, ambition, and political impetus.

Two Decades of Change in Financial Inclusion

When the Treasury’s Financial Inclusion Taskforce was established in 2005, the financial exclusion gap was stark. Millions of people in the UK had no access to even the most basic banking services. That meant no safe place to store money, no direct debits to pay bills, and no foothold in the financial system.

One of the Taskforce’s proudest achievements was persuading the major banks to offer basic bank accounts. These simple, no frills accounts gave 8.8 million people their first connection to mainstream banking. It was a reform that seemed radical at the time but is now so embedded in our financial landscape that it’s easy to forget how transformative it was.

The Taskforce also worked with the regulator to introduce vulnerability guidance, ensuring that financial services recognised and responded to the needs of customers in difficult circumstances. And it championed pensions auto-enrolment, which has brought millions more people into workplace pension saving – this reform’s long-term impact on retirement security cannot be overstated.

I served on the Taskforce’s credit and debt subgroup, where we set baselines, tracked progress, and held institutions to account. When the Taskforce ended, the charity sector stepped in to keep the momentum alive. The Friends Provident Foundation and the Barrow Cadbury Trust funded CHASM (the Centre for Household Assets and Savings Management) to continue the research and monitoring work we had begun.

These reforms worked because they were systemic, evidence based, and collaborative. They were ambitious structural changes that shifted the baseline for millions.

Looking Ahead: The Next Frontier

At Fair4All Finance, I’ve seen the power of targeted, well-designed interventions to improve access to affordable credit and build financial resilience. Today, we face another moment when financial inclusion is climbing the political agenda.

In my work at Independent Age, the national charity tackling poverty in later life, I see day by day the reality of that poverty, and I also see that an ambitious Financial Inclusion Strategy could have a huge role in turning the tide for generations to come. An ambitious Strategy could deliver transformative change, for example by enabling some households to build up rainy day savings through a workplace auto-enrolment model, aligning with the long-term work of the Pensions Commission.

The Reality of Pensioner Poverty

Across the UK, 16% of pensioners – that’s around 1.9 million people – live in poverty, with another million just above the poverty line. Without intervention, Independent Age’s research suggests that figure could rise to 23% by 2040. That would mean nearly 4 million people living in poverty in older age.

The problem is not confined to those already retired. People aged 60-64 are now more likely to experience financial hardship than any other adult age group, with 22% in poverty. Between 2010 and 2022, the number of 60-64 year olds in poverty rose by 800,000.

Even where support exists, it often is not received. In 2023, only 65% of those eligible for Pension Credit received it, meaning up to 760,000 older households missed out on £1.5 billion in income, an average of £1,900 per household.

Fair4All Finance’s recent segmentation research shows that 2.8 million people in the ‘(un)golden years’ group are living in financial vulnerability, with 51% having stopped saving or saving less than before.

A Call to Action

When we introduced basic bank accounts, we didn’t just help people open accounts, we gave them a foundation for financial stability. When we brought in auto‑enrolment, we didn’t just increase pension participation – we changed the retirement prospects of a generation.

Now, we must bring that same ambition to the Financial Inclusion space.  

This is not a problem that will solve itself. Without action, millions more older people will face hardship in the decades ahead. But with the right bold, systemic and collaborative reforms, we can ensure that later life in the UK is defined not by scarcity, but by security, dignity and the ability to participate in the life others have.

The road to financial inclusion didn’t end with the Taskforce. It continues here, with us, and with the choices we make now.