Financial Services Research Conference 2026

08.45 Registration & coffee

09.40 Welcome and extended opening address from the Chair
Crawford Hollingworth, Founder, Department B

10.00 Reinventing trust at HSBC: the research that won executive buy-in
HSBC set an ambition to become the world’s most trusted bank but conventional tracking couldn’t explain the gap between rational and emotional trust. In this session, HSBC and D+M share how they reframed trust from “protection” to “conviction to act” using a blended approach: an AI-enabled discourse analysis across seven markets, AI-powered semiotics of 17,000 brand assets, and 150 depth interviews - plus interviews with all 12 members of HSBC’s Operating Committee to build belief early.
Find out what changed and hear practical lessons on designing research that earns executive sponsorship, influences strategy and demonstrates the value of insight at board level.
Shaun Barton, Managing Partner, d+m
Sebastian Mitchinson, Group Insight Manager, HSBC
Joshua Sorene, Head of Brand & Reputation Insights, HSBC

10.30 The call for reassurance: rethinking customer confidence at Barclays
Why do customers call their bank for reassurance? Barclays partnered with Firefish to explore this question and uncover the role reassurance plays in helping customers navigate financial decisions, interactions and uncertainty Delegates will hear how Barclays combined contact analysis, qualitative research, co-creation and behavioural science to reveal the different forms of reassurance customers seek when making financial decisions.The session will demonstrate how insight can move beyond measurement to identify actionable interventions, reshape customer experience and create new ways of thinking about confidence and behaviour change.
Margot Goldman-Edwards, Research Director, Firefish
Natasha Marko, Head of Colleague Channel Strategy, Barclays UK

11.00 Morning refreshments

11.30 Panel - The confidence inversion: AI, advice, and the gap consumers don't see
Across financial services, consumers are becoming more confident using AI for financial decisions at exactly the moment those decisions get more consequential and harder to unwind. This "confidence inversion" highlights the growing gap between trust in AI and understanding of its limitations.
Bringing together perspectives from wealth management, business banking, and pensions, this panel explores how AI is reshaping financial decision-making. From business-critical choices to long-term retirement planning, panellists will examine where consumers place their trust, how risks differ across contexts, and what firms can do to ensure AI supports better outcomes rather than misplaced confidence.
Chair: Alex Webb, VP, Financial Services, Savanta 
Panellists:
David Barks, Senior Insight Manager, Rathbones
Charlotte May, Insight Partner, Royal London

12.00 Rethinking financial futures (for real this time)
The IFoA's project, A Pension System Fit for the 21st Century, demonstrates how ethnographic insight can reshape public policy and drive systemic change.
Through immersive ethnography and a six minute film, the study revealed the realities of people's lives around saving, showing pensions to be emotional, relational and moral rather than purely financial. It reframed pensions from a technical debate about saving to a human debate about financial futures. These insights underpinned evidence-based recommendations for pension reform and challenged whether the UK's current pension system still reflects the way people live and work today.
Caolan Ward, Managing Director, Northern Ireland, Ipsos (formerly Savings Policy Lead at the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries)
Lucy Neiland, Research Director, Ipsos

12.30 Discovering the financial decisions people never make through their Digital Twins
Some of the most important financial decisions are the ones people never make. The investments they never start, the insurance they never buy, the conversations they never have.
Using a UK insight community, Human8 explored people's relationships with money: the turning points that shaped them, the barriers that hold them back, the key influences and the futures they hope to build.
Join Human8 for a live interview to explore these moments of hesitation, uncertainty and inaction. But the participants won't be on stage. Their Digital Twins will be.
Alongside the live interactions, discover what creating the Twins revealed and what this means for the future of financial services insight.
Paul Child, Head of UK, Human8

13.00 Lunch

14.00 AI personas for communication testing: lessons from Leeds Building Society
In regulated financial services, organisations must demonstrate clear evidence that customer communications are understood. Yet generating this evidence through traditional research can be costly and time-intensive. This session explores how Leeds Building Society and Verve created AI personas trained on real customer evidence to scale communication testing while maintaining methodological rigour.
Speakers will share practical approaches to validation, quality assurance and implementation, demonstrating how AI-enabled research can help organisations test more, improve customer understanding and respond faster to regulatory and customer needs.
Kylie Fitzpatrick, Business Director, Verve
Steven Darby, Research Manager, Leeds Building Society

14.30 Curious but cautious: how financial consumer attitudes will shape the future of AI adoption
Drawing on the latest TGI data, this session explores how trust, confidence and curiosity about AI differ across financial consumer segments, revealing which people are most ready to embrace AI-driven financial services and which remain sceptical or disengaged.
It offers practical implications for banks, insurers, wealth managers and fintechs seeking to balance innovation, trust and regulation as AI becomes an increasingly important part of consumers’ financial lives.
Charlie Gordon, Head of TGI Consultancy, Fifty5Blue
Shruti Dagaonkar, Senior Brand and Comms Research Insight Manager, Nationwide
Jodie Fenton, Senior Analyst, Advertising and Media, Nationwide

15.00 Hearing the customer behind the case: lived experience immersion in an intermediated business
For customers in vulnerable circumstances, the moments when they most need support are often the moments that feel hardest to navigate. For life-insurance providers, every claim is a moment where a customer is likely vulnerable.
Using lived experience video clips, this session will demonstrate how immersive research can create empathy, influence culture and drive customer-centred change. Hear how Guardian Financial Services used lived-experience immersion to bring vulnerable customers’ realities closer to decision-makers in an intermediated business. The session will share practical approaches for moving beyond compliance-led research, creating emotional connection and turning customer stories into meaningful improvements in products, services and support.
Lauren Peel, Managing Director, Inclusive Outcomes
Jo Penrose, Head of Proposition, Guardian Financial Services

15.30 Afternoon refreshments

16.00 Exploring the ‘Retirement Readiness Gap’: how Fidelity used implicit response testing (IRT) to map and own the ‘Psychology of Retirement’
How do you keep financial advice human in the age of generative AI? Fidelity Adviser Solutions and Cowry Consulting set out to solve this by exploring what technology cannot replicate: the psychological dimension of retirement planning.
Hear how Fidelity and Cowry used Implicit Response Testing, machine learning and behavioural frameworks to uncover what really shapes retirement confidence. The session will provide practical inspiration for applying subconscious measurement techniques to complex financial challenges and translating behavioural insight into communications that change perceptions and influence action.
Krisztian Komandi, Behavioural Director, Cowry Consulting
Claire Onianwa, Senior Marketing Manager, Advisory and Partnership, Fidelity International

16.30 How behavioural science can help to solve the hardest problem in finance
Managing retirement savings has been called the “hardest, nastiest problem in finance”. Annuities can provide security through guaranteed lifetime income, yet retirees in many major markets remain reluctant to choose them.
Walnut and RGA used an experimental design with 1,200 retirees and near-retirees to test four communication framings, applying behavioural science principles including chunking, loss aversion and social proof. Discover how evidence-based messaging can overcome behavioural barriers, improve engagement with complex financial decisions and help customers make more informed retirement choices.
Martha Doyle, Senior Research Manager, Walnut, part of Accenture Song
Shilei Chen, Behavioural Scientist, RGA

16.30 Sponsored drinks reception