Regulated Digital

Clients expect their adviser's digital service to feel professional, safe, and easy to use. They also expect to be treated as individuals, which gets harder when every provider, platform, and portal asks them for another username and password.

On episode 49 of Regulated Digital, independent financial adviser Ben Beck, joins host Carole Howard to look at how advice firms can adopt new technology and keep the personal relationship that advice depends on.

Learn more: https://www.mailock.com/blog/keeping-advice-human-secure-client-technology

Fraud controls protect customers and the wider payments system. But they can also stop a legitimate person from opening, keeping, or using the account they need for wages, benefits, and bills.

On this episode of Regulated Digital, Kate Frankish, Non-Executive Director and Board Chair at Suits Me, looks at how providers can keep strong fraud controls without locking genuine customers out of everyday payment accounts.

Learn more: https://www.mailock.com/blog/fraud-controls-financial-access-suits-me

For someone who is blind, being treated as a robot by a CAPTCHA for using a keyboard instead of a mouse is a frustrating barrier.

Put a similar obstacle in a mortgage application or a pension service, and the consequences could extend well beyond an unread webpage.

Robin Christopherson MBE, Head of Digital Inclusion at AbilityNet, joined Sam Kendall on Regulated Digital to discuss how AI can improve access to financial services, and where it can exclude the people who need them.

Robin regularly uses AI to navigate inaccessible services, yet still encounters barriers in the systems surrounding it. His experiences show why firms need to test the whole customer task, from the first identity check to the help available when something goes wrong.

Learn more: https://www.mailock.com/blog/ai-accessibility-financial-services-robin-christopherson

Financial services still make many decisions using a picture of customers that can be incomplete, historic, or built around lives that no longer look typical.

Richer data can help firms see affordability more clearly. The harder question is whether the decision, and the route forward when the answer is no, make sense to the person affected.

On Regulated Digital, Kate Pender, CEO of Fair4All Finance, joined us to explore what happens when financial-services firms use open banking, richer customer data, and AI to make decisions about access to credit.

Better information can reveal income patterns and repayment capacity that a conventional credit file misses. It can also create new risks when customers do not understand why data is being requested, how an automated decision was reached, or what they can do when the process declines them.

Learn more: https://www.mailock.com/blog/ai-data-financial-inclusion

Waiting is one of the hardest parts of a mortgage journey. A borrower may know that their application is moving, yet still have no idea what has been checked, what remains outstanding, or when they will hear back.

That uncertainty becomes more difficult when rates are changing, a property transaction is time-sensitive, or the customer is worried about affordability.

In this episode of Regulated Digital, Paul Broadhead, Head of Mortgages and Housing at the Building Societies Association (BSA), joins us to examine how lenders can combine efficient digital journeys with clear explanation, secure communication, and access to human support.

Building societies bring a useful perspective to this question. Their customer-owned model places long-term member relationships at the centre of their work, while their borrowers increasingly expect to upload documents, complete checks, and follow applications online.

Learn more: https://www.mailock.com/blog/mortgage-communication-borrower-certainty

A narrower financial recommendation should cost less to provide. The difficult part is deciding when that service is suitable and making its limits clear.

In this episode of Regulated Digital, we speak with Simon Harrington, Head of Public Affairs at the Personal Investment Management & Financial Advice Association (PIMFA), about whether simplified advice can widen access to personal recommendations without recreating the cost and complexity of holistic advice.

Simon joined PIMFA in 2017 after roles at Nest and HM Treasury covering automatic enrolment, pension freedoms, and the UK's response to the financial crisis. His policy background gives him a close view of the regulatory intent and the practical questions facing advice firms.

The FCA's targeted support regime went live on 6 April 2026. Its consultation on simplifying pensions and investment advice rules closed on 22 May 2026, with a final Policy Statement still to come.

People do not experience their finances as separate product lines. Open finance becomes useful when connected data helps someone understand what they have, whether they are on track, and what they should do next.

That was one of the central challenges raised by Larry Banda, CEO of TISA Commercial Enterprises and Chair of Select ID, when he joined us on the Regulated Digital podcast.

Larry brings decades of experience across mortgages, investments, financial planning, and digital advice. Before joining TISA, his work at Nationwide included developing roboadvice in the FCA sandbox and rolling out video-based mortgage and financial planning advice services during the Covid-19 pandemic.

In the episode, we discuss what needs to happen for open finance and digital identity to move from industry initiatives into services that firms can deliver confidently and customers will actually trust and use.

Rewriting a letter can lower its reading age. But robust evidence of customer understanding comes from what people comprehend, decide, and do next.

That is the standard financial services firms must now learn to examine.

James Daley, Founder and Managing Director of Fairer Finance, has spent more than 20 years campaigning for better outcomes for financial services customers.

James spoke to us about why financial products remain difficult to understand and what Consumer Duty has changed. The core question is what a firm should be able to demonstrate before claiming that its communications support customer understanding.

Learn more: https://www.beyondencryption.com/blog/prove-customer-understanding

A digital journey can complete successfully while leaving the customer uncertain about what happened, why a decision was made, or what they should do next.

That uncertainty can surface later through repeat contact, abandonment, complaints, and reluctance to trust the next interaction.

In this episode of Regulated Digital, we speak with Oliver King, co-founder and managing partner at Engine, about how regulated organisations can design confidence into digital journeys as automation and AI take on more of the process.

Our questions centre around where trust appears inside a journey. It may be a clear explanation before an identity check, a useful progress update during a delay, or an obvious route to a person when a decision has serious consequences - but these details shape whether the customer feels safe enough to continue.

Learn more: https://www.beyondencryption.com/blog/digital-trust-at-scale

Pensions dashboards promise a simple outcome: one place for people to find and view their pension information.

Behind that simple idea sits a national challenge in data quality, digital identity, and industry coordination.

In this episode of Regulated Digital, Chris Curry, Principal of the Pensions Dashboards Programme at the Money and Pensions Service, explains what dashboards are designed to solve and what regulated firms can learn from the programme.

Learn more on our website: https://www.beyondencryption.com/blog/chris-curry-on-pensions-dashboards-data-and-trust