Why Young Social Entrepreneurs Are the Missing Link in Financial Inclusion.

Published: 2024  |  Perspective updated: 2025

I have spent a lot of time thinking about financial inclusion from inside large institutions. The scale, the infrastructure, the regulatory frameworks — all of it matters. But there is something that large institutions are structurally less good at: building solutions from the inside of the problem, rooted in lived experience of what it actually feels like to be financially excluded.

That is why I was genuinely excited to be involved with the Funding Futures Programme — a fund run by UnLtd and Co-op Foundation, offering non-repayable grants, financial education, and business support to young social entrepreneurs aged 16 to 30 who are working on solutions to improve financial inclusion.

It is a straightforward idea. And it addresses something that I think gets underestimated in financial inclusion work: the importance of who is building the solution.

Why lived experience matters in solution design

The Funding Futures Programme is particularly interested in entrepreneurs from diverse or underserved communities, and specifically those developing solutions from lived experience. The rationale is sound. Interventions that are designed by people who have personally navigated the systems they are trying to improve tend to be better calibrated to the real barriers — not the assumed ones.

This is something I see consistently in the consulting work I do. The gap between how a financial services organisation understands a customer problem and how the customer actually experiences it can be significant. That gap tends to be smaller when people with direct experience of the problem are involved in designing the solution — not as research participants, but as architects.

Young entrepreneurs building in the financial inclusion space are not approaching this from a position of abstract interest. They have seen what poor financial access looks like. They have navigated the gaps themselves, or watched family members do so. That knowledge is not just contextually useful — it is the foundation of better design.

What the fund actually offers

Grants on their own are rarely enough. What makes the Funding Futures Programme more interesting is the combination: non-repayable grants alongside financial education and dedicated business support.

For young social entrepreneurs, particularly those from communities that are themselves financially excluded, the barrier to building a venture is rarely just capital. It is also access to networks, knowledge of how to build and sustain a business, and confidence that there is an infrastructure of support behind you when things get difficult.

UnLtd has been funding and supporting social entrepreneurs since 2002, with a specific commitment to ensuring at least 50% of awards go to disabled entrepreneurs and those from Black, Asian, or minority ethnic backgrounds. That commitment matters. Financial inclusion solutions built by people from the communities they are intended to serve are more likely to reach those communities, and more likely to actually work when they get there.

The wider funding landscape

Financial inclusion is a well-recognised challenge in UK policy — and it remains chronically underfunded relative to its scale. The FCA's Financial Lives survey consistently finds that millions of UK adults are in financially vulnerable circumstances, with the number rising rather than falling in recent years. The UK government announced its intention to develop a National Financial Inclusion Strategy in 2024 — a welcome signal, but one that needs private sector and civil society innovation alongside it to have real impact.

Programmes like Funding Futures sit at an important intersection: they are not waiting for the strategy to land before getting on with building solutions. They are creating the conditions for entrepreneurs with real insight into the problem to develop the ideas that the strategy will eventually need to point to.

That feels like the right sequencing. Large institutions and government set the frame. But the solutions often come from people who know the problem from the inside.

Working with UnLtd and Co-op Foundation on this was energising precisely because it connected the strategic intent of a large financial services organisation with the entrepreneurial energy of people building things from the ground up. That combination — institutional reach and grassroots innovation — is what I believe is most likely to move the needle on financial inclusion.

I am looking forward to seeing what comes through.