Inclusion matters - not just for the individual, but as a way of ensuring as many people participate and benefit from the financial services and products available. This in turn improves their own personal financial outcomes, but can also drive growth in the economy.
Banks have been striving to increase access to financial services for years, but the FCA has admitted this is only half the job. It is also vital we also build the capacity of consumers to use them effectively.
That was the message from a recent address at the Delivering Financial Inclusion Together conference, as FCA Chief Executive Nikhil Rathi spoke compellingly about the interplay between consumer capability, inclusion and ultimately economic growth. In his words, “Improved inclusion should be the goal, but capability needs to be enhanced at the same time, and potentially more quickly”.
Rathi highlighted the clear ‘capability gap’ that continues to frustrate consumer access to services. While the range of new products has expanded rapidly, the rate of improvement in consumer capability - the knowledge, confidence and support to make good choices or avoid bad ones - has simply failed to keep pace.
The risk is simply that giving people more choice without equipping them to use it effectively can leave them exposed, rather than empowered. The evidence is pretty damning: 67% of renters don’t hold contents insurance. And 1 in 10 adults aren’t confident that they could identify a scam. This rises to 16% among households that earn under £15,000. Capability and confidence go hand in hand
From a macro-perspective, this matters. When households make poor decisions because they lack capability, their financial outcomes become significantly worse. You can see this in higher arrears, more complaints, and increased vulnerability to shocks.
Rathi was clear that “better understanding reduces arrears, complaints and scam losses”. Better understanding, and the link to better outcomes is more than just common sense, it’s borne out in the facts. Consumer understanding stabilises the system, supports more effective participation in financial markets, and underpins stronger economic growth. The logic is that it leads to more people saving, investing, engaging with services, and encourages greater trust in the system.
Rathi’s speech pointed forward to a fast-moving future:
“We need to build skills that let people navigate products that may not even yet exist – in an AI-driven and automated future.”
This suggests two powerful levers to enable capability, in the form of AI agents and intelligible communication.
It is clear that the FCA believes that AI agents, and new forms of smart chatbots, virtual assistants and recommendation engines have the potential to personalise support. The FCA hopes they can guide consumers at predictable life moments and demystify complex financial decisions. When integrated into digital journeys, they can potentially bridge the capability gap by advising, nudging and scaffolding decisions, especially for under-served groups.
But for this to work, communications and interfaces must be genuinely understandable. Rathi emphasised the need for “plain-language explainers, and shared evaluation so successful models can scale”. That’s where the concept of intelligibility comes in.
Intelligibility ensures that information is not only readable, but that a consumer can actually comprehend the content, context and implications of a financial offer or service.
Together, more understandable, better explained and supported information can transform capability, and give people across all groups the self-efficacy they want and need.
For firms in banking, insurance, credit and wealth management the implications are clear:
- Drive inclusion through capability. Opening access to accounts, digital services and new forms of credit matters, but without matching capability the risk is more choice without readiness. As Rathi put it “widening access without raising capability leaves people with more choices they don’t feel ready to make.”
- Design for capability by default. Embedding capability into product design rather than treating it as a bolt-on is essential. As Rathi stated: “capability is still too often treated as an add-on under community engagement rather than a key part of how firms design products and services.”
- Leverage AI thoughtfully. Use intelligent agents not just for cost-saving or chat automation, but as genuine tools to support informed decision-making, and especially for financially inexperienced customers.
- Test and report intelligibility. Firms should evaluate how well consumers understand communications, decisions and options, and track outcomes consistently. This aligns with FCA expectations under the Consumer Duty, to demonstrate how communications lead to good consumer outcomes.
- Reap the economic benefits of greater household resilience. More capable consumers mean better decisions, fewer shocks, more saving and investing. In turn, this supports wider financial-system resilience and broader economic growth.
This is where tools such as our Amplifi platform become directly relevant. Amplifi supports financial-services firms to assess, score and improve the intelligibility of their communications at scale. We help organisations to simplify and prove the intelligibility of their customer-facing communications. This in turn builds capability and encourages better outcomes - better understanding and more informed decisions, and hopefully fewer poor outcomes resulting from confusion, mis-understanding or poor product choices. Reduced debt and default, fewer complaints, and less support required at a later date.
We help firms translate clearer communications into uplifting the capability of their customers.
Our guided simplification methods reduce complexity and track improvements over time. This means firms can both comply with regulatory expectations and meaningfully contribute to consumer capability. We don’t want our clients to merely declare the FCA requirements have been met, but help them to demonstrate that their customers understand, act with confidence and benefit as a result.
In summary, Rathi’s speech sets a strong agenda. Inclusion and capability must go hand in hand. For the financial world, that means designing products and services that actively build capability, leveraging AI agents to support consumers, and ensuring communications are genuinely intelligible.
Doing so not only prevents harm but unlocks growth. More informed decision-making, more saving and investing, and stronger system resilience. Tools like Amplifi offer a practical way for firms to operationalise the intelligibility piece of the puzzle, and show they are delivering on a capability-driven inclusion agenda.
Inclusion gives people the tools, and the choice. Capability helps them to use those tools. If the industry takes up that challenge, the benefits could echo far beyond individual consumers - reaching into broader economic growth, innovation and trust in financial services.