You may not have noticed, but when you walked through those doors this afternoon you stepped through a time warp. So, welcome to 2045! A lot has changed in financial inclusion. We changed it, together.

To understand how far we’ve come, we need to remember where we started. What 2025 really looked like – if you can cast your minds back that far.

• An age where 20 million people lived in financially vulnerable circumstances and 14 million had less than £100 in savings
• Rember when 16 million people had inadequate access to affordable credit, and 5.5 million didn’t even apply because they were certain they’d be declined?
• You might recall that illegal lending boomed as regulated higher-cost credit went bust
• Many people were turning to Buy Now Pay Later, getting caught out by late fees, and far too many more turned to illegal money lenders
• Five million people lived with problem debt, mis selling of IVAs was common and somehow not in breach of regulation – even though IVA fees were often the lions’ share of the outstanding debts
• Stigma and fear meant millions suffered in silence. People sought debt advice at least a year later than they should. They sought help for gambling two years later than they should

Some of you here may be too young to remember this, and mysteriously few of you seem to have many more wrinkles all these years later, but back then £24 billion in benefits went unclaimed each year because of lack of awareness, fear of bureaucracy or a crippling sense of shame.

People celebrated starting a pension pot without realising they were among the 39% making inadequate contributions for the future that they wanted. Self-employed people – then a growing group – were worse off still.

In 2025, one in four people in financially vulnerable circumstances had no insurance whatsoever, and many who did were sold expensive products like mobile phone gadget cover, rather than being offered social tariffs or affordable contents cover.

It may be strange to imagine it now, but financial education barely scraped the curriculum.

We thought we’d made a digital transition, but 11 million people were helping others every day with digital transactions that they were afraid of or not capable of handling.

Cash was still used by millions but became increasingly hard to access and to use – despite the UK’s efforts to protect it.

Post Office services, a lifeline for many, were devalued, underfunded and taken for granted. We nearly lost them.

Payments were still stuck in the dark ages of direct debits – even though better tech existed. Carers cards were in their infancy.

Victim-survivors of economic abuse had no clear path to restore their credit file and regain economic freedom.

People were locked out of credit for six years because of legacy file markers – sometimes triggered by something as trivial as a parking fine.

Open Banking had huge potential, yet lender uptake was poor.

The Credit Information Market Study had been going on for longer than the first world war.

Records from the time show that international journalists were baffled, asking:
‘How can a global financial services epicentre – 12% of GDP – be a world leader in profitability, but not in fairness?’

The Consumer Duty only protected consumers –it didn’t help the millions who’d never had the access to even become consumers.

We used to call it the ‘financial inclusion gap’.

With WPI Economics, we modelled in 2025 that improving financial inclusion could deliver at least £6.4bn of economic growth every year. Financial inclusion isn’t just the right thing to do – it’s good economic sense.

Dormant assets – as Government’s dormant assets strategy says – ‘a unique type of funding that focusses on innovative programme design and delivery in order to address complex challenges and enact systemic change at scale’ – gave us the long-term funding needed for real system change, it allowed us to take risks – because social return mattered more.

We had a huge task ahead of us, but from November 4th 2025, we built the foundation for the 2045 you ‘arrived in’ just now

Shall I remind you how we got there, and achieved so much progress in just 20 years?

• In 2026 we launched a small-sum lending pilot with a UK bank, adapting a US model. This grew and grew as the rest of the banking sector recognized the potential for this product to address the £2bn gap in affordable credit in the lending market
• By 2029, over £900m, £900m! was issued through this product
• Commercial lenders also expanded inclusive offerings, and CDFIs supported with guarantees and lower cost capital from retail banks, scaled up rapidly
• The regulators endorsement of the importance of access to affordable credit enabled the funding market for non standard finance to renew with real growth in UK funding for UK firms as they are able to make increasingly competitive investments
• The credit union sector grew from strength-to-strength post common bond reform, a new capital investment menu, with collaborations between credit unions as well as mergers to form a smaller number of larger, resilient and robust credit unions. Credit unions built on regional partnerships with metro mayors and local leaders and baked financial inclusion into regeneration and renewal funding coupled with dormant assets in the most deprived parts of the UK
• Shared back office functions in credit union service organisations enabled scaled growth and a rebranded common product offering enabled savvy cost effective marketing, shared decision engines, price comparison site integration and widespread consumer recognition
• These brilliantly democratic mutuals continued their extraordinary level of consumer engagement in communities across the UK with membership in England and Scotland and Wales on track to reach the penetration level in Ireland by 2035
• Workplace savings expanded through opt-out regulation changes which were brought in to turbo charge early successes of employers who piloted workplace savings as a super powered resilience building tool
• Mutuals including credit unions and building societies became the default deposit takers for employer led savings schemes backed by tech that made for seamless integration with the largest payroll and HR platforms in the UK
• The Help to Save scheme was scaled up and rolled out through credit unions with many new members build up a savings pot for the first time with help from government. Between opt out savings and Help to Save millions built their first proper savings pots and then moved into wider financial services products and services
• By 2035, the number of people with less than £100 in savings fell from 14 million to around 2 million

This changed everything – how people spent, borrowed, and planned. We started to climb up the OECD table for savings and productivity with significant improvements in people’s financial resilience and mental health. The mutuals sector quintupled, the CDFI sector grew 10x faster.

Talking about money became normal, in all communities, and not just in talk money week. Debt advice was properly funded – and offered on every high street in the country. Financial education became central to the curriculum and financial journeys seamlessly integrated capability enablers building people’s confidence.

Technology built with inclusive design at its heart helped people to meet their own specific needs – with the ability to add positive friction before spending, and the payments system was redesigned with consumer voices in the design stage, the testing and the governance.

Services were tailored for people comfortable with the most cutting edge digital technology – and for those who are still hanging onto their old Motorolas.

Calculators that help people understand their entitlement to benefits and social tariffs appeared everywhere – closing the last mile between someone discovering they were eligible and their application being submitted – with really slick conversions of calculations into direct applications for government support with as few clicks as any other financial services journey.

The impact in mental health, and household resilience – is something to be proud of and came alongside growth well beyond the £6.4bn we first modelled.

Of course we know that this positive change has impacted most the people who were most frequently disadvantaged in the financial system back in 2025 – women, people of colour, disabled people, single parents, people on low incomes – and it’s helped us all.

All of this matters because it is about real people’s lives. Let me tell you Sarah’s story (not her real name).

Sarah was one of the first No Interest Loan Scheme recipients in 2021. She had lost her parents the year before, and then in utterly tragic circumstances her brother died too. She didn’t have the money to pay for his funeral. She crowdfunded most of it.

The undertakers then told her that if she didn’t find the last £700 in 10 days they would have to hand his body over to the local council for a pauper’s funeral.

That would mean that he would be buried without any family members being able to attend. This was not the dignified and respectful sendoff Sarah wanted to give her brother and she arrived at South Manchester Credit union, naturally, really distressed.

South Manchester Credit Union – backed by a government guarantee – gave Sarah an interest-free loan.

She said ‘The credit union was like my guardian angel. I was in tears knowing I could say goodbye to my brother’.

Sarah started saving with the credit union and paid the loan back in full and the support that she had from them was a turning point for her. She opened savings accounts for her daughters and in 2027 she took a new job.

She got affordable car insurance.

She moved her family to a better home with contents insurance that actually protected her.

She borrowed again for new furniture for the flat, and this time she had more choice about who would lend to her.

She’d weathered a few storms in between – the washing machine blew up; the car needed repairs; each time she had called on her emergency savings pot when she needed to – it was a revelation to her. She said ‘I didn’t know I could be someone who could save’.

Over time she built up not just an emergency fund but also a freedom fund and when her daughters went to college Sarah went back to school too – retraining enabled by a savings pot that let her reduce her working pattern so she could study.

Her daughters learned from her. Her eldest – now 26 – works in financial services.

This story isn’t fanciful. It’s a blend of real stories – showing what the right support at the right time can unlock.

Ok, let’s come back together now to 2025 and to the work ahead.

Perhaps some of that vision feels a long way off – and that is because there is a lot to do.

But think of the massive changes that we have scaled before, sometimes with great speed, when the political will has allowed us to – basic bank accounts for 8.8m people, over 10 m starting a savings contribution through an auto enrolment pension and no interest overdrafts of £500 for 27m people during covid.

The UK has this proud history to call on – we can have confidence that we can do more again, and it’s not just the UK’s history that gives me that confidence – it’s all of you.

Thank you for joining us today. It’s been such an energising and inspiring day – and I want to say a heartfelt thank you to all of our speakers and panellists who’ve shared their insights and their challenges, to the exhibitors and partners who are bringing innovation and inclusion to life through the work you’re doing every day, to the Fair4All All Team who have pulled this event together, and most importantly to our lived experience experts.

And thank you again to Aviva, for sponsoring today.

And to everyone in this room – for your commitment, your collaboration, and your determination to make financial inclusion not just a policy ambition, but a lived reality.

Listening to the discussions today, I’ve been struck by how much our collective momentum has grown – how ready this sector is to deliver real change.

We’ve heard stories that show what’s possible when inclusion becomes the starting point, not the afterthought.

We’ve heard from community lenders using technology to reach people faster and fairer; from mainstream banks testing new approaches; from innovators designing products differently.

And we’ve heard from people with lived experience of financial exclusion – reminding us why, and how much, all of this matters.

Behind every pilot, every fund, every policy – there are people trying to manage life’s ups and downs, who need and deserve a system that works for them, not against them.

We’ve talked a lot today about systems change – national frameworks, market wide reform, long term momentum. But genuine systems change is built from bold interventions, long term investments and individual commitments – thousands of small steps that add up to big shifts.

So before we close, I’d like to invite you to take one minute of quiet reflection. No talking, no phones, just a moment to think. Please take this time now to consider two things:

• One action you will take immediately – something you can begin this week
• One action you will kick off in the medium term – something more ambitious that will move your organisation, or your partnerships, meaningfully forward

We’ll take that pause together, starting now

Our collective responsibility

Thank you for taking that time to consider your personal next steps from today because the change that is needed on financial inclusion will take all of you.

As Nikhil Rathi said last year: ‘To achieve a step change in financial inclusion, we need to take more risk, accept that we won’t get everything right, and ensure everyone plays their part’ – and I loved what he said this morning about baking financial capability in as we expand access and about everyone across the system delivering the change we need.

Because when we deliver financial inclusion together – and that is what we are doing – we will see myriad benefits to individuals, communities, and to industry too.

I think often of Tim Rooney CEO of Salad, who said something that really stuck with me – he said ‘we didn’t know we could lend to these people – but they have paid us back and they’ve gone on to take out other products.’

We hope the Strategy will be a starting point the sector builds from, with that mindset from industry about the art of the possible, ensuring that mainstream financial institutions serve more excluded customers; helping fill the £2bn gap in affordable credit; growing community finance; expanding payroll savings; and reducing the poverty premium.

The solutions already exist. The innovation, the talent, and the evidence are all in this room. The fintech’s with world leading technology at your fingertips, and the embedded finance giants who have the power and breadth to scale change.

Every one of you has a piece of the puzzle.

So as we leave today, let’s not let the energy fade when we step outside share your reflections, stay connected – with us, and with each other.

Take this back into your boardrooms and communities. Build the partnerships. Push for the changes

We are at a turning point. The Strategy will give us a framework and a challenge – now we must show what delivery looks like – with ambition, urgency, and people at the heart of every decision – consumer voices influencing design choices.

Thank you all – for your insight, collaboration, and above all your commitment.

I’m so grateful to be in this work with you, and I can’t wait to see what we achieve next, together.

Thank you.

Kate Pender, CEO, Fair4All Finance