UK financial services – trends and insights roundup 2024
2024 was a year of change for the financial service industry – whether that was good or bad change depends on who you ask. Nevertheless, YouGov wrote about much of it. Here are just a few highlights from the year gone by.
Banks
The role of banks was – as ever – a major focal point in 2024, and we covered them from a number of angles.
Towards the beginning of the year our data showed that, on average, three in ten UK consumers were falling into their overdrafts every month – a cumulative total of £2.7bn as of February 2024. You can find out more here.
We also looked at the rise of online phone banking, and those who choose to forgo it. In Britain, some 40% use it; but what about the rest? We reveal all in the full article. Sticking with the tech theme, we also profiled customers of app-only banks such as Monzo and Starling.
Our other articles focused on banking explored the appeal (or lack thereof) of co-branded credit cards among Britons, and delved into income, sector breakdowns, and consumer motivations for owning or not owning them.
And – because who doesn’t love a top ten? – we ranked the UK’s best consumer banks in an October report. You can find out who made the cut here.
Insurance
We also looked into the UK insurance industry. We wrote a comprehensive profile of Britons with life insurance – looking at demographic data, their preferred brands, and the ways they research new insurers.
Another potentially lucrative target audience: Britons with fully comprehensive auto insurance who are looking to change providers. We used YouGov Profiles to explore this group’s identity, attitudes, and preferences.
And then, of course, the other kind of insurance. Following the new Labour government’s increase to national insurance contributions in the November budget, we polled business owners about whether or not they thought the changes would make a positive or negative impact. Seven in ten (69%) expected them to have a negative effect.
Right before the election, we asked if businesses thought Labour or the Tories would be better for the economy; a plurality said Labour. Whether these changes affect this perception over the medium-long term remains to be seen.
And the rest
Beyond banking and insurance, we covered the finance industry from a number of angles.
We asked Britons, for example, how they felt about AI’s role in the banking industry: in particular, whether or not they thought chatbots could match humans in terms of service quality. The answers heavily favoured humans at the time – but with AI advancing more and more, those findings could already be out of date.
And with pensions in the news, we ran a survey about “under-savers”: those who hadn’t prepared financially for the later stages of life. We found that a third of people weren’t confident about their prospects in retirement (33%), and that a fifth didn’t know how much they were saving – among other findings. You can read more here.
We also, as ever, conducted our regular monthly polls of consumer confidence in collaboration with the Centre for Economics and Business Research. Our most recent saw some improvement in the overall index.
Finally, we looked at New Year’s Resolutions for 2025. Some 29% are setting a New Year’s Resolution – and 32% of this group are setting one related to finances. We can check in this time next year to see whether they’ve kept it or not, and we certainly plan to keep writing on financial services over the next 12 months and beyond.
Make smarter business decisions with better intelligence. Understand exactly what your audience is thinking by leveraging our panel of 26 million+ members. Speak with us today.