Business case
The business case for accessible financial services
Better access creates better financial experiences.
Financial services should be usable independently.
Everyday financial tasks are increasingly digital. Customers need to be able to open accounts, make payments, manage savings, review insurance and pension information and complete important transactions independently.
Every unnecessary barrier — an inaccessible authentication step, a form that cannot be completed with assistive technology, a statement that cannot be read — moves a customer from acting on their own to depending on someone else. Removing barriers that were never intentional is one of the more direct ways a financial organisation can support customer autonomy.
Accessibility is part of product quality.
Accessible forms, authentication, navigation, content, statements, calculators and interaction patterns can make complex financial services easier to use for everyone. We do not claim that accessibility work automatically increases conversion — the honest link is that accessible products tend to share the same foundations as usable ones.
The Purple Pound
In the UK, the term "Purple Pound" is used to describe the spending power of disabled people and households that include a disabled person. It illustrates a broader commercial point: inaccessible digital experiences can exclude customers who have both the need and ability to use financial products and services.
One widely cited UK estimate puts the combined annual spending power of disabled people and their households at approximately £274 billion (Purple, 2020 estimate). This figure is specific to the UK market and should not be extrapolated to Denmark, the Nordics or the EU as a whole — comparable, verified figures would need to be established separately for other markets.
The point is not to treat disabled people as a market segment to target. It is a reminder that accessibility barriers have a real, quantifiable commercial cost — and that removing them is both the right thing to do and commercially sound.
Remove unnecessary barriers to becoming a customer.
Accessibility barriers can occur at any point in the customer lifecycle — often long before anyone reports them.
A single inaccessible step is enough to stop a customer from completing a journey. Understanding where those steps sit is what connects the commercial argument to real financial customer journeys.
Inclusion can strengthen trust.
Accessible digital experiences demonstrate that a broader range of customers has been considered as part of product quality. For organisations operating in regulated, public-facing or high-trust sectors, this consideration can reasonably support a more inclusive brand perception — a modest, credible claim rather than a guarantee of loyalty or advocacy.
From compliance to product quality.
Accessibility should not only be considered as the cost of meeting a requirement. When integrated into product development, it becomes part of creating robust, usable and inclusive financial services.