The Financial Capability Lab was a multi-year £2.5m programme – the biggest of its kind – from 2016 to 2022, designing and testing new ways to help people improve their money management skills.
The Lab, a partnership between the Money and Pensions Service and the Behavioural Insights Team, focused on three themes: helping people to build savings, get financial help, and manage their credit.
What did The Financial Capability Lab Achieve?
The Financial Capability Lab was created to allow BIT and the Money and Pensions Service to test ideas created using behavioural insights, identifying the ideal decision-making solutions that improve a person’s financial decisions.
The BIT Team used Predictiv to understand behaviour and rapidly test ideas.
Throughout its duration the Lab:
- We generated 244 novel ideas for improving financial capability with the help of 90 experts.
- Tested the most promising 17 ideas through online experiments with more than 10,000 participants.
- Further developed and rigorously tested a more targeted set of ideas with a dozen companies and 130,000 participants.
Created valuable new evidence on how to improve people’s financial capability.
Featured Work
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Pilot findings from Phoenix Group’s Midlife MOT
The UK government’s “Midlife MOT” initiative aims to support individuals in midlife and is a review for workers in their 40s and 50s that helps them assess their finances, skills…
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Using behavioural insights to improve employee financial resilience
By the end of 2023, one million UK households are set to run out of savings entirely.1 The economic pressures…
How Can We Help
At the Behavioural Insights Team, our experienced team have worked with partners to create and test ideas and strategies that help those in financial need.
Our work on The Financial Capability Lab and with Consumers and Finance have allowed us to focus on and support employers and employees as well as individuals with their finances.
Explore our latest financial blogs for more information and advice from The Behavioural Insights Team.
More on The Financial Capability Lab
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Pension Scams: Four ideas for how pension providers can protect pension savers
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Mejorando la seguridad de las empresarias en Honduras: siete estrategias desde las ciencias del comportamiento
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Pension Scams in the United Kingdom
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Four perspectives on embedding behavioral insights into companies
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Buy Now Pay Later: What are the risks and benefits to consumers?
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Want to protect consumers? Understand what makes them tick
Work With Us
Whilst our work with The Financial Capability Lab has come to an end, The Behavioural Insights Team continue to work with Consumers and Finance to provide behavioural insights and financial support.
No matter your industry or personal need, get in touch with our team of experts to receive more information on our services today.
Meet the team
Elisabeth Costa
Managing Director, BIT UK
Nida Broughton
Director, Economic Policy
Pantelis Solomon
Consultant
Faisa Abdi
Advisor
Jemuwem Eno-Amooquaye
Qualitative Research Advisor
Chiara Cappellini
Senior Research Advisor
Dr Sujatha Krishnan-Barman
Senior Advisor
Ellie Lugt
Senior Advisor
Cathy Magrey
Head of Capacity Building Programmes