At the Nest Insight 2025 conference, one panel session explored how thoughtful, human-centred design could help more people access and benefit from financial systems that truly meet their needs.
Together, we examined how new technologies and design approaches can be better at helping people recover from financial shocks and move forward, and best support promising solutions to scale. Our approach to this is about finding ways that not only address the immediate need, but do that in a way that supports people going forwards.
We heard from both experts by experience and experts by profession about emerging solution spaces (see video), including:
Broadening access and inclusion
‘For me the most helpful, important [kind of solution] would be the accessing and inclusion one. Financial products can feel very gate-kept and, very jargony. And if you don’t know the terminology… you’re really kind of trapped sometimes. The first thing you’re going to do is read the basics or [focus on] what is being said to you from the person helping you, and you’re just going to sign on the line… but if you took a bit more time… you may take a step back and be like, you know what, this might not actually work for me. This might not be for me.’ – Annika, Nest Insight Expert in Action
‘We’re really talking about making sure that people, irrespective of their income, irrespective of their circumstances, irrespective of their background, have access and awareness of appropriate and affordable financial products and services. And that is much bigger than just credit… It’s savings, flexible products, insurance, ways to connect with the benefit system to maximise income, really effective ways to tackle problem debt, genuine, timely connections to gambling help and I could go on.’ – Kate Pender, CEO, Fair4All Finance
At the Nest Insight 2025 conference, Kate also spoke of how the No Interest Loans Scheme pilot supported 14,000 people in the UK to access credit to bridge a financial gap, and shared examples of international regulatory and banking innovation that have helped people access safer ways to borrow. (see video)
Supporting variable and non-standard income and payment patterns for people on volatile incomes
‘People’s circumstances change. So are you potentially stating that you’re going to create a tool and even though it is flexible, there’s still some rigidness around it. You know, there’s still, some… difficult terms and conditions coming with that…. How flexible is flexible?’ – Tracy, Nest Insight Expert in Action
‘Moneyline piloted…variable reoccurring payment, which is essentially: how can people, when they take out a loan instead of paying on a direct debit on a regular day every week, can they pay back what they want when they want? The trial is as you might expect, putting more trust and more control in the hands of their customers meant that they paid back better. …There were less people in arrears and the survey that they did with people who’ve used it found that 93%… found it easier or just the same as using a direct debit. But most importantly, 67% of people who used it worried less about their money… They feel more in control and they’re worrying less about their money.’ – Alex Christopoulos, Lead, Aviva Foundation
Unlocking the potential of the workplace and payroll as financial touchpoints
‘When I first started working, it wasn’t directly put to me that there are these options or, you know, particular backup plans. As such, I felt that I did most of kind of the investigating or just found out by accident, or maybe another colleague introduced me to particular benefits or potential help that would be available.’ – Tracy, Nest Insight Expert in Action
‘[With payroll functions or outsourced payroll services] it’s all just about creating the payslip and that’s the job done. But.. the person might need to understand their pension or their deductions or what they need to do if they’ve got the incorrect tax code or what some of the weird terminology is on their payslip. So making it helpful with all the great content that’s available from MaPS, for example, having helpful people or money first aiders inside your organisation to be able to talk to people, talk to the human beings that are being paid by your organisation. That’s what can really drive make a difference and help people… Payroll isn’t this boring, tedious administrative burden for companies, but actually can become this super helpful, super value creating function that helps people… improve [their] financial resilience.’ – Simon Bocca, Founder and CEO, PayCaptain
In this video, Simon shared five key factors that could transform the approach to payroll and impact the financial resilience of workers across the UK.
Designing hybrid products that help people balance competing priorities
‘It comes to the transparency and the interest of the different providers and how they kind of live within each other.
If you’re talking about savings and debt, how do you measure those comfortably and transparently?… And also if you have a tool that does a lot of different things, how do you tailor that. How, how do you tailor that to so many different needs. And consumers.’ – Annika, Nest Insight Expert in Action
‘What [we] mean by hybrid is integrated solutions that combine two or more financial functions in one place to help people address more than one need, by sequencing and managing the tensions between those different things. So traditionally we’ve designed products and policies around single financial functions. ‘Borrow’, ‘save’, ‘pay’, ‘invest’, ‘insure’. You bring things together to work better for people. None of these solutions is going to fix all the problems. It doesn’t generally mean more money going in, but it can make it easier for people who are not those maximisers to make the most of their money and really importantly, to feel more in control. Knowing that you’ve taken one step that leads to another step, I think, is a really different position to be in than taking one step in isolation and all of the rest kind of remaining undone.’ – Jo Phillips, Director of Research and Innovation, Nest Insight
In this video, Jo shared three examples of solutions that join up products or services traditionally offered in isolation, and how they might help people plan and manage the tensions between the decisions they are making about their financial lives.
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