NatWest, Nationwide and HSBC UK have confirmed participation in the Centre for Finance, Innovation and Technology‘s Financial Inclusion Coalition, announced on 15 October 2026. The coalition is developing a Supported Payments framework intended to create a legally recognised middle ground between full financial independence and formal arrangements such as Lasting Power of Attorney or deputyship.

The move follows HM Treasury‘s Economic Secretary welcoming the initiative at the Fintech as a Force for Good conference in London the previous week, underlining a degree of government alignment that CFIT has been careful to cultivate since receiving Treasury funding to take the project forward.

From grassroots campaign to institutional programme

The coalition’s origins lie in Project Nemo, a not-for-profit founded by Joanne Dewar and Kris Foster that spent more than two years building the evidence base for disability inclusion in financial services. Nationwide led a significant research publication through that initiative, identifying a structural gap: for people with learning disabilities or other conditions requiring assistance with day-to-day spending, the current system offers no practical midpoint. The choice, in effect, is between informal workarounds such as sharing cards, PINs and online banking credentials, or triggering disproportionately heavy legal arrangements designed for more serious incapacity.

CFIT launched the coalition formally at Money20/20 Europe in June 2026, and the addition of three of the UK’s largest retail banks gives it the institutional weight needed to move from research into implementation.

Anna Wallace, chief executive of CFIT, said: “For too many people, getting help to manage their money still means giving up more control than they should have to. Tackling that challenge requires coordinated action across the industry. CFIT is here to do exactly that: marshal the expertise, commitment and resources needed to move beyond recognising the problem to developing and testing practical solutions that deliver meaningful change.”

What the framework will do and when

Through the remainder of 2026, coalition participants will run focused sprints across two workstreams. The first is a Trust and Consent Framework, covering how individuals could appoint a trusted third party to assist with payments without a formal Power of Attorney, along with consent and permissioning models, liability considerations and regulatory alignment. The second workstream is a proof-of-concept pilot, potentially leveraging open banking infrastructure, to test supported payment journeys in real-world environments with consumers, carers and financial institutions. People with lived experience will be involved directly in designing and testing the proposed customer journey.

An interim report setting out the coalition’s initial findings and governance framework is expected before the end of the year. That will feed into a second phase focused on building and testing a minimum viable product for Supported Payments.

Regulatory and market context

The initiative sits within a broader UK push to make consumer financial services more inclusive. HM Treasury’s Financial Inclusion Strategy has previously cited the barriers faced by disabled consumers, and the FCA‘s Consumer Duty, which came into full force in 2023, places explicit obligations on firms to deliver good outcomes for customers in vulnerable circumstances. A Supported Payments framework would give banks a structured, regulated mechanism to meet those obligations rather than relying on informal accommodations that can expose both customer and institution to risk.

The open banking angle is worth watching. Using Payment Initiation Services or Account Information Services under the existing PSD2-derived framework in the UK could allow a trusted third party to initiate or oversee payments on behalf of a customer without requiring full account access, potentially resolving some of the consent and liability questions the coalition is working through. Whether that technical path proves sufficient, or whether primary legislation will be needed to establish the liability framework for trusted third parties, is likely to be a central question in the interim report.

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