Equal access to financial services is fundamental for achieving financial independence and full participation in society. With money impacting all aspects of life, providing accessible financial technologies and banking solutions is crucial for ensuring that disabled people maintain financial independence wherever possible.
New regulations intend to ensure that financial services and technologies are accessible to disabled customers, however, in practice, disabled people still face many barriers when trying to access web and mobile technologies for personal finances, or to access general information about pensions, loans, investments and mortgages.
The 'Inclusive FinTech' project aims to address the accessibility gap in financial technologies by engaging disabled groups, charity representatives, and stakeholders from the financial sector in a collaborative co-creation process. The project will involve two collaborative workshops focusing on understanding the challenges faced by disabled people when accessing financial technologies and co-creating actionable recommendations for future inclusive technologies and digital financial products.
Through qualitative data analysis and stakeholder engagement, the project team aims to develop policy and design recommendations to inform future financial sector's accessible and inclusive practices. Partnering with Virgin Money, this pilot project seeks to drive innovation and promote greater accessibility in mobile and web technologies for personal finances, ultimately benefiting different disabled communities in the UK.
Project Aims:
- Understand the main challenges faced by disabled individuals when accessing financial technologies for services such as personal banking, investments, pensions on mobile and web platforms.
- Co-create actionable recommendations for embedding accessibility and inclusivity into future financial technologies with disabled communities representing individuals with a diverse range of sensory, cognitive, and physical abilities.
- Inform new policies and design practices within the financial sector to promote greater awareness around accessibility and equality in financial services for disabled groups.
- Foster inclusivity by engaging disabled communities, charity representatives, and stakeholders from the financial sector in the co-creation process of inclusive future financial technologies and digital financial products.
Project Lead:
Dr Arthur Theil (arthur.theil@bcu.ac.uk)
Co-Investigator:
Dr Sayan Sarcar (sayan.sarcar@bcu.ac.uk)
Project Impacts:
Disabled people represent 24% of the UK population and a significant market segment that is often underserved. According to a HM Treasury report, there are more than 1.2 million disabled citizens without a bank account in the UK. Furthermore, according to the Scope charity, 12% of disabled individuals in the UK cannot physically access their banks and the majority of banking websites do not fully meet the minimum accessibility regulations, making it difficult for many disabled users to access their finances online.
Our vision for this project is to explore inclusivity in the financial sector by co-creating future financial technologies with disabled communities in the UK. We aim to get a better understanding of the main barriers faced by disabled individuals when accessing financial technologies and services, as well as challenges when trying to access general information about personal finances (e.g. loans, mortgages, investments, pensions).
We will collaborate with our industry partner Virgin Money to develop actionable recommendations for creating accessible and inclusive financial technologies and products, ultimately impacting more than 16 million disabled individuals in the UK and promoting higher financial inclusion within the sector.
Funder:
The project is funded by the UKFin+ Network / EPSRC.
Contact Information:
To find out more about the project, contact Dr Arthur Theil (arthur.theil@bcu.ac.uk)