New report by Innovate Finance, in collaboration with EY, highlights how UK FinTechs are helping consumers ease cost-of-living pressures.

The latest report by Innovate Finance titled ‘FinTech: Helping with the cost-of-living’ raises awareness of the FinTech solutions available to help consumers navigate the current cost-of-living crisis and to outline policy recommendations to accelerate progress in bringing new solutions to market.

The report provides an action plan for how industry, regulators and government can better work together to ensure essential consumer finance solutions come to market. It also profiles existing money managing solutions, from managing subscriptions and forecasting future essential expenditure to how consumers can access more affordable, transparent credit.

The cost-of-living crisis is affecting millions of households across the UK. Recent data from the OBR reveals that RHDI (a measure of living standards) fell by 4.3 per cent in 2022-23, the largest drop since ONS records began.

To date, FinTechs have already played a major role in improving personal finance and supporting consumers. They help millions of customers manage finances better, shop around for better deals, manage sudden drops in income, spread the cost of essential purchases and get cheaper access to credit.  This includes Snugg, helping people use digital channels to plan for better house insulation to Fintern utilising open banking to look at a consumer’s financial health.

The new report lays out steps that regulators must take to help FinTechs support consumers. 

The report calls for regulators to: 

• Extend Open Banking to support the deployment of budgeting and affordability algorithms. Many FinTech tools used by consumers to manage their finances are powered by Open Banking – a system that provides third-party access to financial data through the use of application programming interfaces. Regulators need to extend Open Banking rules to a wider range of services, with priority areas including all savings accounts, credit and mortgages so consumers can get a complete picture of their finances.
• Introduce a cap to fees charged to release consumers’ financial data for open banking e-commerce payments, enabling broader adoption of lower cost payment methods among merchants. 
• Introduce new regulatory rules on debt advice to enable more robo advice for people in need. The FCA should agree on clear guidelines that would enable rapid deployment of robo-advice by FinTechs to ensure more people can receive easily accessible free financial advice.

In addition, the report highlights how corporations, especially large utility companies including energy, water and telecom organisations, can utilise FinTech products to benefit consumers to manage their money in a more transparent and accessible way. 

Janine Hirt, CEO at Innovate Finance

“There is more FinTech companies can be doing to help people – especially with open banking, but this can only be made possible by regulatory change. We are at a critical juncture, with consumers facing increasing pressures on their personal finances, and it’s essential there is a swift change in regulatory policy.

“At a time when consumers everywhere are struggling with the increasing cost of living, FinTechs are playing a critical role in helping all of us navigate through this challenging economic period.Currently, eight out of every ten adults in the UK regularly use a FinTech tool, and we can increase FinTechs usage, and value to the consumer, by bringing corporates on board as well.”

Chris Woolard, UK Head of FinTech at EY

“Rising interest rates and declining real incomes have created significant cost-of-living pressures for millions of people in the UK. FinTechs are already starting to come up with innovative solutions, using technology and data, to help ease these pressures and help households manage their finances better. However, awareness of solutions can be low and some lack scale. If government, regulators and industry work closer together, there is the opportunity to create the right market environment for good ideas to succeed.

“Our report with Innovate Finance seeks not only to showcase some of the money saving solutions out there at the moment, but to outline recommendations for how progress can be accelerated for the benefit of all.”

Download the report here.