Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what steps her Department has taken to improve accessibility to online banking for blind and partially sighted people.

The Government is committed to ensuring that everyone can access and use financial services.

Financial services providers are bound under the Equality Act 2010 to make reasonable adjustments, where necessary, in the way they deliver their services. UK banks’ and building societies’ treatment of their customers is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), which requires firms to provide a prompt, efficient and fair service to all customers.

The FCA’s Consumer Duty seeks to raise the standard expected from firms for all customers. It aims to ensure firms deliver products and services that offer fair value and are designed to meet customers’ needs, and that they are increasingly focused on delivering good outcomes and preventing harm.

For example, from a financial inclusion perspective, the Consumer Duty seeks to prevent consumers with characteristics of vulnerability from being unable to access and use a product because the customer support is not accessible to them.

In practice, firms are expected to consider how they provide services to customers who are unable to use specific processes, such as biometric or digital identity verification, and to ensure that appropriate alternative approaches are available where needed.

More widely, the Government published its Financial Inclusion Strategy last year which sets out a range of ambitious measures for government and industry to improve financial inclusion for underserved groups across the UK. This includes a focus on access to banking and accessibility, with interventions to make it easier for blind and partially sighted people to pay by card and to make financial products more accessible through an inclusive design working group.

The Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology (DSIT) also published their Digital Inclusion Action Plan last year, which sets out Government’s first steps towards our ambition of delivering digital inclusion for everyone across the UK. This seeks to address wider digital barriers, including improving digital skills and confidence, widening access to devices and connectivity, and providing support through local communities.