Why Financial Services Has a Role to Play in Getting the UK Online.
A few years ago I helped host our first Digital Learning Day — a morning dedicated to supporting people to get online and build confidence with digital tools. We had Digital Champions (colleagues who had volunteered their time to support customers and communities), partners from Digital Unite, Mhor Collective, and SCVO, and a small but genuinely energised team behind it.
It was one of those mornings where you finish feeling like the work actually matters. Not in the abstract, strategy-document sense, but in the immediate, human sense.
I've thought about it a lot since. Particularly as the pace of digital change has continued to accelerate, and the gap between people who move through the world with digital confidence and people who don't has kept widening.
The scale of the problem
The statistic I quoted at the time — that more than one in four people in the UK were missing out on a digital dividend in terms of earnings, financial wellbeing, and access to services — has if anything become more urgent, not less.
Research from Good Things Foundation found that 8.5 million UK adults still lack the basic digital skills needed for everyday online tasks — and that while the headline number has improved slightly, the divide has deepened in practical terms as more essential services have moved online. Having fewer people offline matters less if the services those people need are now only accessible digitally.
LINK research found that nearly one in four UK adults classify themselves as digitally excluded in some form, with income being the largest single factor. Among households earning under £10,000 a year, 44% identified as digitally excluded. Digital exclusion and financial exclusion are not separate problems. They tend to arrive together.
People with high digital engagement can save over £1,100 more a year compared to those with low engagement, and those without internet access can pay as much as 25% more on essential goods and services. The digital dividend is real. So is the cost of missing it.
Why financial services organisations specifically have a responsibility here
Financial services sits at an interesting intersection in this problem. On one hand, the industry has been a significant driver of the shift to digital — faster, cheaper, more convenient for the many. On the other, that same shift has left some customers with fewer ways to engage, fewer branches, fewer phone lines staffed at reasonable hours, fewer options that don't require a smartphone and a reliable broadband connection.
Government research has found that 29% of those who are offline find it difficult to engage with financial services at all. That is not a small number. And in a sector where Consumer Duty now requires firms to demonstrate genuine good outcomes for all customers — including those who are most vulnerable — digital exclusion is not something that can sit outside the frame of what financial services organisations are responsible for.
This is part of why a Digital Learning Day felt meaningful rather than box-ticking. It was an acknowledgement that the shift toward digital-first is something the industry has actively driven, and that comes with a corresponding responsibility to bring people with you.
What Digital Champions actually do
The colleagues who volunteered as Digital Champions were not IT professionals. They were people from across the organisation who had some comfort with digital tools and a willingness to sit with someone and help them figure it out.
That peer-to-peer element matters. Research into digital champion programmes consistently finds that people are more likely to engage with digital skills support when it comes from someone they see as similar to themselves — not a trainer, not a technical expert, just someone who can help them set up an email account or show them how to pay a bill online without judgment.
Age UK's Digital Champion Programme, which has supported thousands of older people across the UK, found that one-to-one support combined with group sessions was the most effective model — the group sessions provided socialising and normalisation, while the individual time addressed specific needs and anxieties. Both matter. Neither replaces the other.
The organisations we partnered with — Digital Unite, Mhor Collective, and SCVO — each brought something different: expertise in digital skills training, community reach, and knowledge of the specific barriers facing people in Scotland. That partnership model is part of what made it work. A large financial services organisation has resource and reach. It does not always have the community trust or the specialist knowledge of where the gaps actually are. That is what the right partners bring.
What I believe now
The world has moved further toward digital-first since that morning in 2022, not less. AI tools, digital identity verification, app-based banking, online-only services — all of these raise the stakes for people who are not online or are not confident when they get there.
For every £1 invested in digital skills, research suggests a return of £9.48. The economic case is clear. So is the human one.
Hosting a Digital Learning Day was a genuine attempt to do something useful. But it was also a small thing relative to the scale of the challenge. The organisations that will make a real difference on digital inclusion are the ones that treat it as a strategic priority — with resources, partnerships, and accountability — not a one-morning event on Global Accessibility Awareness Day.
The event was a start. That is what it was. The question worth asking, for any organisation, is what comes next.