The Centre for Finance, Innovation and Technology has launched a national Coalition on Financial Inclusion, starting with the development of a supported payments framework for people who need help managing their money.
Backed by HM Treasury, the initiative brings together banks, fintechs, regulators, charities, consumer groups and people with lived experience. Its first focus is a model that would let individuals make everyday payments while a trusted third party provides oversight and support.
The work is aimed initially at adults with a learning disability, though CFIT believes the model could also be relevant to people with dementia, fluctuating mental health conditions, acquired brain injuries and some neurodivergent people. Many who need help with day-to-day spending currently face a choice between formal legal arrangements and informal methods such as sharing cards, PINs or passwords.
This gap has become a growing concern for financial firms and charities because informal arrangements can expose customers to fraud, financial abuse and loss of control. It also creates liability and visibility issues for institutions with little formal insight into how support is being provided.
Building on Nemo
The coalition builds on work by Project Nemo, a disability inclusion initiative in financial services. Over the past two years, Project Nemo has worked with the learning disability community, charities, regulators and financial institutions to explore how people can retain independence while receiving practical support with payments.
CFIT said 11 million UK adults, or about 19.3% of the adult population, already help someone with digital banking. That suggests a broad market need that extends well beyond the coalition’s initial target group.
CFIT has previously convened coalitions on Open Finance, Digital Company ID, SME Access to Finance and Open Property. This latest programme is its fifth national coalition and reflects a wider policy push around financial inclusion.
A core part of the work will be designing a trust and consent framework that allows a customer to appoint a trusted third party to support payments without removing autonomy or requiring a full Lasting Power of Attorney or similar formal arrangement.
The second workstream will focus on a proof of concept and pilot. The coalition plans to test supported payment journeys in real-world settings and may use Open Banking infrastructure to do so.
Policy backing
The Treasury has linked the work to the Government’s Financial Inclusion Strategy, signalling official interest in moving the issue from research and advocacy into implementation.
“Nobody should be locked out of the chance to build a better future, which is why CFIT’s work is vital in helping to support people manage their money. The Government’s Financial Inclusion Strategy recognised the important contribution Project Nemo has made in highlighting how inclusive design can support greater financial independence, so that people can participate fully in the economy and manage their finances safely and confidently,” Rachel Blake, Economic Secretary to the Treasury, said.
Anna Wallace, Chief Executive Officer of CFIT, said the current system leaves too many consumers without a safe option for everyday support.
“This Coalition is about tackling a systemic gap in the financial system: today, too many people who need support managing money are forced to rely on unsafe and unscalable workarounds. By bringing together industry, regulators, government and lived experience, we have an opportunity to build practical supported payment solutions that can be implemented safely and consistently across the market. Focusing innovation on underserved consumers will ultimately help create a more inclusive, resilient and trusted financial system for everyone,” said Wallace.
Project Nemo’s founders have argued that the issue has been visible for some time but has lacked an industry-wide structure for delivery. The coalition model is intended to provide that structure by bringing multiple parts of the financial system into a single programme.
“Project Nemo began two years ago with a belief that disability inclusion and accessibility needed to move from the margins to the mainstream of financial services innovation. Since then, through our groundbreaking films, our research report with Nationwide and our codesigned app by CI&T showing what the learning disability community were looking for, we have seen the industry come together in ways we could not have imagined. By combining Project Nemo’s community-led work with CFIT’s coalition delivery model and HM Treasury support, we now have an opportunity to unlock the sticking points to providing better solutions that can make a meaningful difference to people’s everyday lives and ensure that the future of financial services works for everyone,” said Joanne Dewar, Co-Founder of Project Nemo.
For consumers and firms alike, the central question is whether the coalition can produce a regulated model that preserves independence without relying on unsafe informal practices. CFIT said the pilot will gather feedback from consumers, carers and supporters, assess operational feasibility for financial institutions, and identify barriers to wider adoption.