CFIT Chief Wallace to Outline UK Policy Agenda on Fraud, SME Finance and Inclusion

Anna Wallace, chief executive of the Centre for Finance, Innovation and Technology, will sit for a profiling interview covering four areas where the body says policy, technology and regulation intersect: Digital Company IDs, SME lending access, the homebuying process, and financial inclusion for adults with learning disabilities.

The topics mirror CFIT's published work programme. No new data releases or policy announcements accompany the interview pitch, which remains unconfirmed at the time of the original correspondence.

CFIT frames Digital Company IDs as infrastructure to combat economic crime. The organisation's research suggests the scheme could deliver a 50 per cent reduction in onboarding costs, a 60 per cent drop in onboarding time, and an annual compliance-cost saving of £1.7billion across the UK economy.

Those figures are drawn from CFIT's internal research programme and have not been independently verified by external auditors or regulatory bodies.

On small business finance, CFIT contends that Smart Data tools and Financial Health Dashboards could unlock up to £5billion in additional SME lending by improving lender visibility into borrower finances.

The figure sits alongside persistent concern about the UK's structural lending gap for smaller businesses, an issue the British Business Bank and the Treasury have examined repeatedly. Open Finance frameworks under development by the FCA are the likely regulatory vehicle for the kind of data-sharing CFIT describes, though the FCA has not yet set a binding timeline for a full open-finance regime.

The homebuying strand connects to Smart Data in a different way: CFIT argues that verified digital property information shared earlier in the conveyancing process could reduce transaction fall-through rates.

Currently, roughly one in four completed sales in the UK fall through before closing, according to industry estimates. CFIT's position is that earlier visibility into verified property data could lower that figure.

The fourth theme, Supported Payments for adults with learning disabilities, addresses a gap the FCA's Consumer Duty rules were intended to close. Those rules came into full force in 2023 for open products and 2024 for closed-book products.

CFIT's model would allow a trusted third party to assist in account management without triggering full third-party control provisions, which can be onerous and limit autonomy for the account holder.

CFIT was established in 2022 following a recommendation in the Kalifa Review of UK Fintech, with a mandate to coordinate across government, regulators and industry on complex cross-cutting challenges.

Wallace joined from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, where she led financial inclusion programmes. She previously held the Head of Innovation role at the FCA, where she was involved in commissioning the first joint FCA and Bank of England survey on AI adoption in financial services.