Financial Inclusion Commission report published

Today, the Financial Inclusion Commission has published it’s report.

Unlock provided oral evidence and written evidence to the commission.

The report makes a series of recommendations, including on banking, insurance, savings and credit.

The report highlights how:

• Nearly two million adults in the UK do not have a bank account
• Financially excluded people pay a ‘poverty premium’ of £1,300 each year
• An estimated two million people took out a high-cost loan in 2012 as they were unable to access any other form of credit
• Up to 8.8 million people are over-indebted
• 13 million people do not have enough savings to support them for a month if they experienced a 25% cut in income
• 50% of households in the bottom half of the income distribution to not have home contents insurance
• 15 million people report one of more signs of financial distress
• Having the whole population of the UK making full use of the world’s most advanced financial services systems makes economic as well as social policy sense.

Our contribution to this work is to ensure that the specific issues surrounding criminal records are considered. In particular, our evidence focused on the way that criminal records are treated by insurance companies, as well as the difficulties people can face opening a bank account.