The Financial Lives Survey: what it shows about UK consumers

The Financial Lives Survey is the Financial Conduct Authority's (FCA) large recurring survey of how adults across the UK are getting on with money. It asks thousands of people about their financial situation, the products they hold, how they feel about managing money, and what has gone wrong for them. The 2024 round collected 17,950 interviews between 5 February and 16 June 2024, using a questionnaire of nearly 1,300 questions¹.

Its findings underpin a lot of what the regulator then does. The survey is where the widely quoted figure comes from that around half of UK adults, 25.6 million people, display one or more characteristics of potential vulnerability². It also tracks financial resilience: the FCA has reported that 13.1 million adults, or 24% of all UK adults, had low financial resilience in 2024³. Those numbers feed directly into rules such as the Consumer Duty, which now requires firms to consider the needs of customers with characteristics of vulnerability at every stage of the customer journey⁴.

How the survey is carried out: nearly 18,000 people and nearly 1,300 questions

The Financial Lives Survey is designed to be representative of UK adults, not a self-selecting poll. The 2024 round used random probability sampling of addresses, with an invitation sent by post, and interviews carried out online and by telephone⁷. Fieldwork ran from 5 February to 16 June 2024, and a total of 17,950 adults participated, with more, just under 45%, completing the survey in May 2024 than in any other month¹.

The questionnaire is long because it aims to cover the whole of a person's financial life. The 2024 survey covered nearly 1,300 questions across a wide range of topics¹. Earlier rounds give a sense of the breadth: the 2020 survey covered just over 100 different products or groups of products⁸, and its results were published in three separate reports using two surveys⁸. The 2022 round collected 19,145 interviews between 1 February and 6 June 2022⁹, while the 2020 round, which ended in February 2020, had 16,190 respondents⁸. Because the 2020 fieldwork finished just before the coronavirus pandemic took hold, its results give a picture of consumers' financial positions before the pandemic, which is what later rounds were measured against⁸.

The rounds so far, and the shorter recontact survey the FCA ran in between, line up like this:

Half of UK adults show signs of potential vulnerability

The survey's most quoted finding has been remarkably stable over time. Evidence to the Treasury Committee reported that 50% of UK adults, 25.6 million people, display one or more characteristics that indicate their potential vulnerability². FCA guidance on payments firms says the same in plainer terms: around half of UK adults show at least one characteristic of vulnerability¹¹. The Financial Ombudsman Service put the number at more than half of all UK adults, 27.7 million people, when drawing on the survey in 2021¹². And when the first results were published in October 2017, the Ombudsman noted that the survey already suggested half of UK adults had characteristics of potential vulnerability⁶.

What counts as a characteristic is broad, and the FCA and the Ombudsman set out the triggers in similar terms. Vulnerability can be triggered by one or more of the following⁴:

• health conditions or illnesses that affect someone's ability to carry out day-to-day tasks
• life events like bereavement, job loss, or a divorce or relationship breakdown
• being less able to bear financial or emotional shocks
• having less knowledge of financial matters, lower confidence in managing money, or low capability in other relevant areas like literacy or digital skills

The Welsh Government's guidance for firms makes the point that any consumer can become vulnerable at any time in their life, for example through serious illness, bereavement or loss of income¹³. It also distinguishes "particularly" vulnerable customers as those who might not have the mental capacity to make financial decisions¹⁴.

Vulnerability and money problems overlap. The FCA found that 3.1 million adults, 6%, used cash to pay for everything or most things in the 12 months up to May 2022, and that this rises to 9% for those who had one or more characteristics of vulnerability¹⁵. In its policy work the FCA has likewise noted the 9% figure amongst vulnerable groups, including consumers who are digitally excluded, have poor health or are on low incomes¹⁶. In Scotland, a government review of the cost of living crisis reported that over a third of adults, 39%, either need debt advice or are at risk of needing it soon, and that 15%, equivalent to 8.1 million people, needed debt advice to stop their situation getting worse¹⁷.

Low financial capability: 17% of potentially vulnerable adults

Within the 50% of consumers who are potentially vulnerable, 17% have low financial capability². The 2024 survey broke capability down into its parts, and the FCA's own good practice work on consumer understanding sets out the figures for all UK adults¹⁸:

• 36% have low knowledge about financial matters
• 17.7 million adults, 34%, have poor or low levels of financial numeracy
• 22% lacked confidence managing their money
• 19%, or 10.3 million adults, had low confidence with everyday numeracy
• 12% of adults, around 6.3 million, had limited understanding of the products they held

Capability gaps are widest among people already outside the system. Among unbanked adults as of May 2024, 38% had low capability, 21 percentage points more than the UK average, and 25% had no qualifications, 17 percentage points more than the average¹⁹. Low capability also shapes how people relate to the regulator itself: adults with low resilience, at 40%, and those with low financial capability, at 39%, were the most likely to have low levels of trust in the FCA, among those aware of it²⁰.

These figures matter beyond statistics. The FCA uses them when judging whether firms' communications are understood, and the Ombudsman looks at whether firms supported customers whose circumstances made them less able to engage. The Ombudsman has also observed that vulnerable customers are over-represented in higher risk investments, quasi-gambling trading behaviours and complex digital platforms²¹, which is one reason capability data feeds into product rules.

Financial resilience: 2.2 million more adults struggling after the pandemic

Financial resilience, in the survey's terms, means being able to absorb shocks. The FCA's figures indicate that roughly one in four adults have low financial resilience, defined as people in, or at risk of, financial difficulty⁵. Comparing the pre-pandemic and post-pandemic rounds shows the scale of the deterioration: 2.2 million more adults had low financial resilience in May 2022 compared with February 2020⁵.

The pandemic itself was widely damaging. The Financial Ombudsman Service, citing the FCA's survey, noted that 38% of adults had seen their financial situation worsen because of Covid-19¹². Resilience is also unevenly spread by age: an Ombudsman consultation drawing on the 2024 survey noted that 18% of both the 18-24 and 25-34 age groups have low financial resilience²².

The headline count has been reported in cash terms as well as percentages. The FCA has stated that 13.1 million adults, or 24% of all UK adults, had low financial resilience in 2024³. The Treasury Committee, reporting on financial exclusion, has drawn on the same body of work when pressing the government on its plans for people who struggle to access financial services²³.

For context, other official surveys paint a similar picture of strain. The Money and Pensions Service's Debt Need Survey found that 15% of adults, equivalent to 8.1 million people, needed debt advice to avoid their current situation worsening, and that 39% either need debt advice or are at risk of needing it soon¹⁷. Free, impartial debt help is available: debt advice explains the options, and MoneyHelper is the government-backed free service to start with.

What the survey showed about the cost of living

Between the main rounds, the FCA ran a shorter recontact survey focused on the cost of living. From 8 December 2023 to 28 January 2024 it surveyed respondents to its main Financial Lives 2022 survey, gaining 3,450 responses¹⁰. The report focused on people's financial situation as at January 2024, on some changes since a year earlier, and on perceptions of change since the cost of living started to rise¹⁰.

Other bodies' research from the same period shows what the pressure of rising prices did to behaviour. The Financial Services Compensation Scheme's consumer research found that in February 2023, 85% of consumers were concerned about the increased cost of living⁵. It also found that 34% of respondents were considering financial providers they had not heard of before, and that 8% of over-55s said they were taking more risks with their money as a result of the cost of living crisis⁵. Those findings matter for consumer protection: unfamiliar providers and higher risk-taking are conditions in which scams and unsuitable products flourish, which is covered in scams and fraud.

The cost of living is measured officially as well as surveyed. The Office for National Statistics produces the Household Costs Indices, which measure changes in the prices of the goods and services households actually consume²⁴. In Northern Ireland, the Survey of Living Conditions asks about many aspects of life including housing, health, employment, income and the cost of living²⁵. The FCA's survey adds the financial behaviour layer on top: not just what prices did, but how people responded.

How the findings feed into the Consumer Duty

The survey's vulnerability and capability findings are a foundation for the Consumer Duty, the FCA's rules that came into force for firms' retail business. The Duty is built on a single overarching consumer principle, alongside rules and cross-cutting obligations that firms must follow, and it sets four outcomes that carry more detailed expectations: Products and Services, Price and Value, Customer Understanding, and Customer Support²⁶. The Ombudsman describes the same four areas as the governance of products and services, price and value, consumer understanding, and consumer support²⁷.

The link to the survey is direct. The Ombudsman explains that the Consumer Duty requires financial businesses to consider the needs, characteristics and objectives of their customers, including those with characteristics of vulnerability, at every stage of the customer journey⁴. The Welsh Government's guidance for firms states that the Duty applies across all of a firm's regulated activities, from high-level strategic planning to individual customer interactions, and that its obligations impose higher standards than the previous Treating Customers Fairly regime¹³. The FCA describes the Duty as outcomes-based rather than process-heavy, with evidence expected to be proportionate to the firm's scale and complexity²⁶.

The Duty also reaches into specific rulebooks. The FCA Handbook's mortgage chapter on responsible lending, MCOB 11, requires firms to treat customers fairly and act in accordance with the Consumer Duty by assessing whether the customer will be able to repay the sums borrowed and interest²⁸. The Handbook's principles also state that a firm must enable and support retail customers to pursue their financial objectives²⁹. The Ombudsman has called the Duty a positive intervention that is raising standards across the system²¹, and it has published guidance for firms on supporting customers in vulnerable situations when handling complaints⁴.

Where to read the survey reports

All the survey's reports are published free on the FCA's website. The 2024 round has a key findings report¹ alongside themed reports, including ones on retail banking¹⁹, payments⁷, and credit and loans²³. The 2020 round's page collects the three reports the FCA published using its two surveys⁸, and the cost of living recontact report is published separately, first published on 10 April 2024 and last updated on 16 May 2025¹⁰. The FCA has also said it will make the 2024 survey data available through GeoDS by September 2025¹⁹.

The Financial Lives Survey sits in a wider family of official surveys of household finances, and knowing which is which helps when checking a figure:

The Family Resources Survey is published as accredited official statistics³², and its data underpins the Households Below Average Income series³³. The Payment Systems Regulator has also used the FCA's survey findings in its own work on cash access, use and acceptance³⁴. Meanwhile the Money and Pensions Service now runs its MoneyView survey every year, to give what it calls a holistic picture of adults' personal finances³⁵.

Where the survey's figures have limits

Like any sample survey, the Financial Lives Survey has boundaries. It surveys a sample of adults, so every figure is an estimate subject to sampling variation, and results are weighted to represent the population. Weighting itself can be revisited: the FCA made changes to some published 2020 results after identifying the need to improve data weighting, although it noted that very few changed by more than one percentage point⁸.

The recontact survey has a narrower base than the main rounds. It was run among respondents to the main 2022 survey, gaining 3,450 responses¹⁰, so it measures change among people who had already taken part rather than a fresh cross-section. The main rounds are larger, but still samples: 17,950 interviews in 2024¹ out of tens of millions of UK adults.

Some things a survey of this kind cannot capture at all. The ONS's quality guide for the Wealth and Assets Survey notes that certain forms of wealth cannot yet be captured by the survey, for example some informal debts, offshore assets and complex trust structures³¹. The same caution applies in principle to any household survey: people may not know, recall or report every product, debt or asset they hold, and the most excluded groups, such as unbanked adults, are by their nature harder to reach, even though the FCA does report on them¹⁹.

Finally, the survey measures situations at a point in time. The 2020 round ended in February 2020, before the pandemic⁸; the 2024 fieldwork ran from February to June 2024¹. Figures quoted from it should carry their round and date, because the same measure, such as low financial resilience, moves between rounds, as the 2.2 million rise between February 2020 and May 2022 shows⁵. Where a figure matters to a decision, check the round it comes from on the FCA's own pages.