Our Director of Programmes and Campaigns, Nick Bryer, reflects on what we’ve achieved over 2024.
As we come towards the end of the year, I’m looking back with a lot of pride at what our team has achieved in a challenging external context. We have helped to build and strengthen coalitions, and we have developed and led impactful campaigns to help create a financial system that delivers better outcomes for people and the planet. I also feel great gratitude for the very brilliant people, groups and organisations that we have the privilege to work with, and without whom we couldn’t achieve anything at all.
Fair Banking for All
Millions of people in the UK are excluded from the financial system, unable to access the services and support they need. The Fair Banking for All Campaign seeks to change this by calling for a new law, a Fair Banking Act, to open up access to affordable credit for people and businesses currently excluded.
In the last year the Fair Banking for All Campaign has gone from strength to strength. It’s grown from 13 organisations to over 30 – including credit unions, debt support groups, policy specialists, and many more. It’s also built stronger connections with people whose lived experience of financial exclusion has helped shape the campaign.
To help persuade more policy-makers of the need for a Fair Banking Act, we published a new research paper which showed the scale of the potential benefits that such an act could bring for people on low-incomes and for small businesses.
A highlight was the event that we held in Parliament in October with the APPG on Fair Banking. We heard from people with direct experience of financial exclusion, and organisations who are doing incredible work to combat it. We were also delighted to be joined by actor and activist Michael Sheen, who has lent his support to the campaign.
After a successful year building the power of the coalition, we’re now looking forward to scaling up our work with the new government. You can follow the campaign on social media, or email Sam and Kay, who lead the campaign, if you’d like to be involved.
Fair, green pensions
The UK’s £2trn pensions system needs major reform: it is not delivering decent, secure retirements for all, and it is not playing a big enough role in providing the investment that is so urgently needed to accelerate a just transition to a thriving low-carbon economy.
The new Labour government has made pensions reform a cornerstone of their economic strategy. The landmark Pensions Review – the biggest such review in 20 years – and Pension Schemes Bill (2025) represent a major window of opportunity.
In 2024, the Lab worked with a range of civil society partners to develop a set of policy recommendations for transformative change. This began in January with the publication of our in-depth report The Purpose of Pensions, followed by policy papers produced with our allies in civil society and the trade union movement.
Using these, we’ve engaged cross-party politicians and industry, as well as other civil society allies, and our work has generated good media coverage throughout the year. For instance, our CEO, Jesse Griffiths, was on LBC discussing why pensions reform should be linked to the green transition.
We go into 2025 with growing consensus that the pensions review can and should be much more ambitious in its scope and goals, and with a growing number of organisations wanting to work together to push for this. The benefits for savers and pensioners, for the economy, and for nature and the climate could be enormous.
Climate and Nature
The new government has made some important steps in the right direction regarding climate and nature but there are still some big unanswered questions. They clearly hope that the private sector will play a major role in financing the transition to a low-carbon economy, yet there is no clear plan for this. At the same time, the UK finance sector remains a major funder of fossil fuel expansion, deforestation and other environmental destruction around the world.
This year we’ve been working with a wide range of allies to push for greater ambition and urgency in finance sector policy and regulation, to align the massive power of the finance sector with the mission to create a sustainable economy.
We have been coordinating a growing network of civil society organisations to build our collective ability to influence the new government in a number of key areas. We co-authored a joint policy position, uniting 15 organisations around a shared narrative for sustainable finance reform ahead of the election. We also conducted research to better understand how civil society organisations engage with the finance sector, which has identified a number of ways in which we could make our engagements more consistent and impactful.
Simultaneously, we have continued to engage with leaders within the finance sector, through initiatives such as our ‘Banking on Breakfast’ convenings, which bring together banking professionals to discuss sustainable finance policy and practice. As we head into 2025, we will be engaging a broader range of leaders from the finance sector, alongside civil society, regulators, politicians and more, to develop and build support for a more ambitious policy agenda that could truly turn the UK into a world leader for sustainable finance.