“Financial inclusion means that individuals and businesses have access to and use affordable financial products and services that meet their needs, which are delivered in a responsible and sustainable way” – World Bank.

Financial inclusion is about more than just having a bank account.  It is about having the resources and opportunities needed to fully engage in banking and financial services. It is crucial to meaningful participation in society.

Across five research projects with a range of communities across Aotearoa New Zealand, we have identified how seemingly simple barriers compound to exclude thousands from basic financial services and have highlighted what organisations can do about it. While each project has a unique context and specific insights, we share some of the overarching learnings from across our work on financial inclusion.

We worked alongside Auckland City Mission to engaging with the research findings of their year-long research project with roughly 100 families that were experiencing poverty and debt. Rather than overwhelming audiences with statistics, we created “Charlotte”, a composite character whose story reveals the harsh realities of financial hardship. The empathy tool we created has contributed to significant organisational change at Auckland City Mission and other organisations over the last decade. Individuals, businesses, NGOs, Ministers, and respected authors have all approached us to say how the Empathy Tool gave them ‘new eyes’. As a high-profile Minister said at the time, “I didn’t realise how time-consuming and expensive it is to be poor”. Readers have been able to ‘see’ the patterns that trapped people in poverty. We have been told many times over about how they were galvanised to action often for the first time.

Read our case study here.

For this work with the Ministry of Social Development, we engaged with 48 different organisations—from Women’s Refuge to community services—who work daily with people in communities that are traditionally hard to reach. These intermediaries became our bridge to understanding, and once trust was established, many facilitated direct conversations with their communities. Five concept characters emerged representing different cohorts, each with design principles that celebrate the smallest wins and acknowledge that any positive change in a complex life should be celebrated.

Read more here.

Around 1.1 million New Zealanders identify as having a disability. As our population ages, that number is likely to increase. Westpac recognised the importance of ensuring that banking services were inclusive and accessible for disabled people. Based on a series of engagements with disabled people and organisations, we produced a report with insights on the barriers and enablers for disabled people’s access to banking, and recommendations for how the banking sector could improve to be more inclusive. Westpac has actioned a number of these recommendations and is working collaboratively with others in the sector to develop a more accessible banking system for all.

Read the full report here.

At the time of our research, it was estimated that 51,000 people in New Zealand didn’t have bank accounts. This isn’t about choice – it’s about systemic barriers that compound to exclude people, often those experiencing other vulnerabilities. We partnered with Westpac to better understand the unbanked population in New Zealand, and the challenges and barriers that they face. This issue was previously under-researched and poorly understood, and our research was able to catalyse and contribute to the banking sector’s work to better include and support vulnerable customers.

Read our case study here.

Sometimes the barriers aren’t in policy – they’re in practice. We surveyed 722 frontline banking (and non-bank deposit takers) staff across Aotearoa, alongside other research to better understand the barriers to customer onboarding (i.e. the process of opening a bank account). This research with RBNZ on financial inclusion highlighted the gap between policy intention and frontline reality and went on to inform discussions about regulatory flexibility and staff empowerment.

Read the full report here.

While each of these projects covered different aspects of financial inclusion and focused on the experiences of different people and communities, together they hold common threads and provide valuable learning about financial inclusion more broadly.

While it may appear that there are options as to how people might engage or access financial services, for many people, their ‘choice’ is the result of having no other options that are viable for them. For many people, the option they choose will simply be the one where there is the least friction, rather than it being an ideal or suitable pathway for them. To ensure different people have equal access to choice, organisations may need to either make mainstream services more widely accessible or in some cases, develop alternative options that are specifically designed for different situations and needs.

Where there are increased barriers to access, greater work is required by people to overcome or try to navigate these. This means there is greater burden on those who experience exclusion. This can be particularly problematic when services require significant resources from people, sometimes forcing them to opt for short-term solutions. These might ease the immediate burden, but they can exacerbate the long-term burden, by costing more money or requiring more time and energy to resolve later. For example, taking a loan to pay the power bill allows you to keep cooking for the kids, but the interest puts you further in debt.

Many people have overlapping forms of disadvantage and barriers, and this increases the burden for them. These disadvantages compound, leaving little energy or time for anything other than addressing immediate needs. Some financial services and processes are foreign and challenging for the average person to navigate, and when layering this experience with greater disadvantage and barriers to access, it can become impossible. When already facing difficulty, having to work through the barriers can be incredibly challenging and overwhelming for people – no matter how motivated and resourceful they might be.

Building on insight 3, people’s executive functioning is at its lowest when they are overwhelmed, making it even harder for them to navigate any hurdles of engaging with or accessing financial services. Helping to remove a stressor in someone’s life can help them address other challenges.

Rules or processes have often been designed or set in a certain way for good reason, but that doesn’t mean that they are the only way or are the best that they can be. For example, anti-money laundering legislation – which is important for keeping people safe – has led to strict policies in banks around proof of identity or address, which has resulted in people struggling to obtain bank accounts. Policies need to be inclusive of different groups of people, experiences and backgrounds, so that they can be designed in a way that both keeps people safe AND ensures people aren’t further excluded. Sometimes achieving this right balance might require collaboration between different parts of the system.

Similarly, a more connected and collaborative system would help to solve webs of barriers where there are ‘chicken and egg’. For example, a new New Zealander needs a SIM card, which requires a local bank account, but they can’t get a bank account without proof of address, but the ways to provide a proof of address require them to have a local phone number/SIM card. These challenges often cut across different sectors or providers and can feel impossible to resolve. Many people, when sent around in circles in situations like these, would give up as they feel they have no other options.

These projects remind us why we design is at the heart of our work: the belief that we can do things differently. While we work within constraints around profit, efficiency, and productivity, we also can drive change in spaces that might feel unchangeable.

The call to action isn’t just for financial providers or government agencies, it’s for all of us who are designing systems or services that people must navigate. Whether you’re designing a power company’s payment system, a local government service, or a community organisation’s intake process, there are important considerations in these insights.

Designing for experiences or situations that are very different to our own emphasises the importance of utilising methods such as research or co-design to hear the stories of different people who use or are impacted by the service or process. Inclusive design requires understanding the diverse needs, goals, pain points, behaviours and preferences of those who will use or are impacted by what you are creating or improving. As always, we are incredibly grateful for all the organisations, experts, communities and people with lived experience, who gave their time to share their stories and experiences for these projects.

Financial inclusion is ultimately about dignity, participation, and the fundamental right to engage with society on equal terms. Our recent work in this space has shown us the power of research, co-design and visual storytelling to create impetus for improving current systems. We are lucky to have worked with amazing clients who have seen the need for this work and are driven to work both individually and collaboratively with other system players to foster greater financial inclusion.