Better Future
Our "better future" pillar reflects our commitment to fostering inclusive growth. We seek to empower and support our people and wider communities, promoting diversity, learning and financial confidence to create opportunities for all.
Fintel's ESG Strategy
2023 highlights
170
financial product education articles with Defaqto expert's input
27%
EDI data disclosure rate amongst staff (FY22: 15%)
#14
Best Financial Services Company to Work For in the UK (FY22: #20)
Financial Confidence
Using our expertise and reach, our focus is to increase financial wellbeing and inclusion by improving individuals’ ability to make smarter financial decisions and access products and services that meet their evolving needs.
Our focus
- Helping consumers to make smarter financial decisions
- Promoting professional financial advice
- Educating advisers on the latest trends, products and regulation to help them meet their client’s needs
- Supporting the financial wellbeing of our people
2024 Priorities
- Expand support we offer consumers in making smarter financial decisions
- Explore further opportunities to extend our reach and support consumers with financial product insights
Helping consumers to make smarter financial decisions
Combining the most comprehensive product database in the UK with expert research methodology, Defaqto Star Ratings are the most trusted expert assessment of the products and policies in the market, recognised by 75% of consumers.
Based on expert analysis of over 45,000 financial products and 4 million product features, Star Ratings enable intermediaries and consumers to assess the quality, features and benefits of a financial product at a glance, empowering them to make smarter financial decisions.
We use our deep understanding of financial products to increase consumer understanding of the complex financial products landscape. Since April 2023, our team of experts have contributed to more than 170 consumer press articles, sharing valuable insights into financial products ranging from mortgages and savings accounts to home, travel and motor insurance policies.
For 2024, we are delighted to have partnered with The Times, increasing the reach of our financial product insights and education. Utilising the UK’s largest financial product database, Defaqto will provide weekly data for the Best Buys section in the Money pages of the Saturday edition of The Times, as well as in The Sunday Times. This will span current accounts, savings, mortgages, loans, and credit cards.
KEY FACT
UK Retail Financial Services is an increasingly complex market with thousands of financial products to choose from including almost 10,000 home, motor and travel insurance policies; 1,000 current accounts and credit cards; 1,000 life and protection policies and over 600 wealth and pension products.
Promoting professional financial advice
We passionately believe in the value of professional financial advice, and we are dedicated to improving trust in and access to this crucial sector.
In 2023 we acquired two businesses sharing this mission; Competent Adviser, the UK’s fastest growing digital knowledge and competence management system, and VouchedFor, a business dedicated to increasing confidence in, and generating demand for, professional financial advice.
Educating Advisers To Support Financially Vulnerable Clients
In a post pandemic world and with contributing trends such as the rising cost of living, financial vulnerability is a growing problem for consumers. The FCA has focused keenly on vulnerability over the past few years, and we foresee that its interest in this vitally important area will only increase moving forward. To ensure our Member firms are well positioned to support their vulnerable clients we:
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Collaborated with the Financial Vulnerability Taskforce to promote best practice standards in supporting vulnerable clients. We support its aims of delivering positive, fair, outcomes to all and improving consumer access to advice and encourage early adoption of the Taskforce’s charter amongst our membership. - Expanded our vulnerability hub, containing comprehensive resources and guides helping advisers serve vulnerable clients.
- Launched a cognitive assessment tool to help advisers identify, assess and better support vulnerable clients.
Supporting Financial Advisers Through The Industry's Largest Education Programme
With over 10,000 financial intermediaries using Fintel’s technology or services, and over 400 industry partners working with us to distribute their products, we play a crucial role in connecting product providers and intermediaries to simplify a fragmented market. In 2023 we supported over 18,500 attendees at our events programme, the largest of its kind in the industry, educating advisers on the latest trends, products and regulation to help them meet their clients’ needs.
Supporting the financial wellbeing of our people
We understand that the financial wellbeing of our employees is fundamental to their long-term financial security.
Recognising this, in 2023, we launched a financial wellbeing and money management platform to empower our staff to take charge of their financial health. This initiative provides our team with the tools, insights and knowledge to effectively manage their finances.
Additionally, we host regular drop-in sessions with a pensions expert to provide professional guidance on pensions-related matters, supporting our employees’ long- term financial health and confidence.
OUR CONTRIBUTION TOWARDS U.N. SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS
Target 4.4 Increase the number of people with relevant skills for financial success
Financial confidence is one of our high priority areas and our focus is to use our expertise and influence to increase financial wellbeing and inclusion. Since April 2023, Defaqto’s team of financial product experts have contributed to over 170 consumer press articles, sharing valuable insights into financial products ranging from mortgages and savings accounts to home, travel and motor insurance policies. To support financial wellbeing of our people, during the year we launched a financial wellbeing and money management solution, offering tools and resources to improve financial literacy and foster economic empowerment.
You can find "Our Contribution to SDGs" report here.
Our Thriving Workforce Framework
We're committed to building an engaging environment for everyone to thrive by promoting diversity, individuality, learning and development. To ensure that Fintel is an inclusive and rewarding place to work we continuously develop our knowledge, approach, resources and policies.
Our focus
- Sustaining high levels of staff engagement by monitoring and responding to our workforce’s needs
- Supporting our people to learn, develop and progress
- Ensuring our culture and policies promote a diverse and flexible workplace
2024 Priorities
- Extend the pilot mentoring programme
- Incorporate diversity and social mobility in the design of our future career development and recruitment programmes
- Further enhance our people policies, including improved family leave and pay
- Support staff health and wellbeing with introduction of free basic annual health checks
Inspiring Better Outcomes
"Our fabulous people are the key to our prosperity and we believe we succeed when they do. To enable us to achieve our long term goals as a business we are passionate about listening to the views of our people and taking action to create a supportive and inclusive working environment where everyone can thrive. Embracing employee feedback is a fundamental part of our culture and we’re very proud to have this recognised via our Best Companies achievement"
EMILY BLAIN
People and Operations Director
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Ensuring The Wellbeing Of Our Colleagues
We consider the wellbeing of our colleagues crucial to their success and in turn to the success of the business. Employee wellbeing, monitored through monthly pulse surveys, is reported to the ESG and Wellbeing committee at least quarterly allowing us to continuously improve our approach and policies, which include:
Wellbeing support, delivered via:
- Monthly calendar of activities spanning mental, physical, financial, career and social wellbeing
- Inclusion of a wellbeing section in quarterly performance reviews and introduction of a dedicated wellbeing group on our company communication hub to promote open communication
- Access to funded medical cash plan helping our colleagues cover the cost of everyday healthcare and other discounted health support and screening services
- Access to a financial wellbeing and money management companion tool
Mental health support, including:
- Access to a free, confidential employee assistance programme
- Internal qualified Mental Health First Aiders across the business
- Mandatory annual training for all employees on positive mental health at work
Health and safety policy, ensuring that we:
- Provide and maintain safe and healthy working conditions, equipment and systems of work for all our employees
- Provide such information, instruction, training and supervision that may be needed for the purposes of complying with any requirements to eliminate or reduce the effect of the hazards created by our operations
8.0/10
average employee rated wellbeing score
Building An Inclusive Culture
We believe that a supportive and inclusive culture is key to our success as individuals and an organisation, and we recognise that people from diverse backgrounds and experiences bring valuable contributions and perspectives.
These values are built into our organisational DNA, underpinning our approach and our culture, and we consistently monitor and reinforce them.
Our approach includes:
- Ensuring that we recruit, develop and promote people for their aptitude, skills, experience and ability.
- Mandatory annual diversity, equality, and unconscious bias training for all our colleagues.
- “Inclusive” behaviour built into the performance review, rating and reward process.
- Perceived inclusivity being monitored across the business via regular pulse surveys.
- An employee induction programme and culture guide, helping new colleagues to feel like a part of the team from day one.
- A flexible working promise and dress for the right mindset approach, allowing our people to customise their work routines to balance their work and personal lives and feel comfortable and authentic at work.
- Enhanced family policy entitlements, including maternity leave and paternity leave, as well as new modern paid policies such as menopause, fertility leave and pregnancy loss.
9/10
is how our colleagues rate our level of inclusivity and equality
Focus on Engagement and Reward
Our people are our key asset, and we strive to create a collaborative and engaging environment, offering fair reward and recognition for the hard work they contribute to our shared success.
Our approach includes:
- Monthly ‘pulse’ surveys to monitor employee satisfaction across key criteria, allowing us to identify trends and respond to feedback in real time.
- Regular company updates run by senior management and quarterly Fintel wide updates hosted by our CEOs to ensure our people are kept updated on the strategic direction and progress of the business.
- Regular formal and informal staff recognition to celebrate those who demonstrate our values and behaviours.
- A Flexible Benefits platform, providing staff with access to flex their Company benefits package according to their own needs.
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Ensuring we pay all our employees a real living wage as a minimum, evidenced through our real living wage employer certification.
82%
Employee engagement score
Promoting Learning And Development
We have robust support structures and development programmes in place to ensure that our people have access to resources, support and opportunities at all levels. This includes:
- Appointment of a Head of Talent and Development to implement structured progression programmes via talent development and succession planning.
- Inclusion of a personal growth section within the quarterly performance reviews to embed development and progression planning.
- Dedicated sponsorship budget for those who have professional qualification or development needs.
- Promotion of apprenticeships, external manager development programmes and funding of professional qualifications aligned to our colleague’s progression ambitions.
- A career site increasing visibility of internal opportunities across the organisation.
- Online learning platform available to all staff, with access to support materials and e-learning.
- Operation of a HR business partner model to ensure that all managers have dedicated development support.
31%
of managerial vacancies were filled internally in 2023
Collaborating with The Industry
Industry collaboration is a key enabler in our focus on diversity and inclusion, ensuring we contribute to building a fairer and more inclusive industry, whilst also implementing best practice in our own approach. Some of our recent collaborations and memberships include:
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Inaugural membership of Progress Together, a government backed membership body focused on driving socio-economic diversity at senior level across the UK financial services through sharing best practice with our industry peers. -
Inaugural membership and active support of Diversity & Inclusivity Finance Forum, advocating a more balanced and fairer mortgage industry. -
Founding membership of the Mortgage Industry Mental Health Charter, providing a framework for member firms to improve mental health support across the sector and within their organisations.
Our contribution towards U.N. Sustainable Development Goals
Target 10.2 Promote universal social, economic and political inclusion
We made significant progress in our “thriving workforce” focus area in 2022 with the launch of our flexible staff benefits platform and enhanced policies including new family focused policies to promote wellbeing and engagement, and attract a broader range of talent.
In May, we became inaugural members of Progress Together, a membership body focused on levelling up opportunities across the UK financial services industry through sharing best practice with industry peers. Our membership cements our commitment to promoting diversity in our business and the sector as a whole, evidenced through our employee voted equality perception score of 9.2/10.
You can find "Our Contribution to SDGs" here.
Community Engagement
We seek to drive positive change for wider communities both directly through sponsorship of worthy causes and indirectly supporting the endeavours of our colleagues.
Our focus
- Giving back to local communities
- Supporting charitable causes selected by our people
2024 Priorities
- Promote volunteering opportunities and encourage our people to use their volunteering allowance
- Support local charities chosen by our staff
Charity Support
Our colleagues choose local causes to support throughout the year, as a way of giving back to our local communities.
We are proud to be named a Platinum Partner of the Forget Me Not Children's Hospice for 2023. We are dedicated to supporting the incredibly valuable work they do, both for young people experiencing life limiting illnesses and their families.
"We were delighted that SimplyBiz became our Platinum Partner. We are honoured to be working even more closely with the team this year and can’t thank them enough for the support they’ve offered over the years!”
CHARLIE ROEBUCK
Forget Me Not Hospice
Ken Davy, Chair of Fintel and President of the hospice's Platinum Partner consortium, presents Kerry Boyle, Chair of the SimplyBiz charity committee with the official partner trophy.
Other causes we supported throughout 2023 include:
