Fairer Finance and Sideways Launch Consumer Duty Accreditation to Rebuild Financial Trust

Fairer Finance and Sideways have formed a strategic partnership to address the "trust gap" in retail financial services through a new accreditation scheme and AI-driven diagnostics. For fintech professionals, this move signals a shift toward proactive Consumer Duty compliance, using behavioural design to identify and rectify customer friction before it manifests as regulatory findings or churn.

What was announced

The partnership introduces a new "Michelin-star-style" accreditation designed specifically for banks, insurers, and lenders. This scheme sits alongside Fairer Finance’s existing Customer Experience and Product ratings but operates on a different methodology. While standard ratings evaluate firms from an "outside-in" perspective, this accreditation requires the active participation of the firm. It involves a "deep dive" into internal governance, fair value assessments, management information (MI) dashboards, and complaints trend analysis. The goal is to provide external verification that a company is meeting Consumer Duty requirements while offering a tangible mark of quality for consumers.

Alongside the accreditation, the partnership is launching an "agentic" diagnostic tool powered by AI. Built by Andrew Beckley, the tool is designed to monitor customer-facing communications and digital touchpoints in real-time. It evaluates these interactions against the "Seven Trust Signals" defined by Sideways, flagging trust-eroding patterns as they occur. This allows financial institutions to maintain an ongoing read on customer sentiment rather than relying on static, periodic scores.

The collaboration also functions as an innovation layer for the sector. By combining Fairer Finance’s regulatory expertise and engagement with government bodies with Sideways’ design strategy, the partnership aims to help firms bring new products to market faster. This is particularly targeted at sectors like insurance, where the product is a future promise, requiring trust to be integrated into the initial design phase rather than tested retrospectively.

"Every company knows the importance of trust. It is at the core of customer retention. But even with the best intentions, it can often be hard to see where it is leaking out, and how to fix it quickly. In a world where AI begins to change the way consumers buy financial services products, there will be fewer places for firms to hide if they are delivering poor experiences at key customer moments. Our partnership with Sideways allows us to diagnose and fix problems quicker – and then reflect the real customer experience back to prospective customers through our new accreditation scheme. We want that to be something meaningful that is hard won and a genuine mark of quality."

James Daley, Managing Director of Fairer Finance.

The companies involved

Fairer Finance is an independent consumer group, research business, and ratings agency that has operated in the UK market for 12 years. The firm provides market data and ratings to help financial services companies improve customer outcomes and navigate regulatory expectations. Its leadership includes James Daley, and the firm maintains a Consumer Advisory Board, which is currently chaired by Helene Brichet.

Sideways is a behavioural design consultancy that focuses on the intersection of trust and user experience. The firm was co-founded by Daljit Singh, who previously co-founded ANNA Money and grew the challenger bank to over 100,000 customers. His fellow co-founders include Nicolas Roope, who led the high-profile UBS rebrand with Publicis following the 2008 financial crisis, and Andrew Beckley, who serves as the firm's Agentic Lead. Beckley brings 24 years of experience in financial services, specifically examining the culture and processes that underpin consumer trust. The consultancy specialises in identifying how legacy systems and organisational structures can unintentionally damage the relationship between a brand and its customers.

What FF News has reported before

Fairer Finance has been a consistent source of insight into the UK’s evolving trust landscape. We previously covered their research in Trust in Insurance on the Rise – but Insurers Still Have a Long Way to Go, which noted a gradual but fragile recovery in sector reputation. However, this recovery has not been felt equally across all demographics; as detailed in Insurance Trust Gap Widens: Higher Earners Gain While Lowest Earners Lag Behind, significant disparities remain for lower-income consumers. The firm has also been vocal about the risks of automation, a theme echoed when Sheldon Mills Warns AI Could Turn Consumers Into Passive 'Observers' of Personal Finance. To bolster its own governance during these shifts, Fairer Finance Appoints Helene Brichet to Chair of Consumer Advisory Board was a key move in 2025.

What this means

This partnership highlights a growing industry realization: "checking the box" for Consumer Duty is no longer sufficient in a market increasingly mediated by AI. As automated agents begin to handle product selection and comparison for consumers, firms with "leaky" trust profiles will be systematically filtered out by algorithms that prioritize transparent outcomes over marketing spend. The move toward "agentic" diagnostic tools puts pressure on traditional consultancies that rely on retrospective audits. By attempting to quantify trust in real-time, Fairer Finance and Sideways are challenging the sector to treat consumer confidence as a live technical metric rather than a vague sentiment. This puts firms with legacy communication systems under immediate pressure to modernize or risk failing these new automated benchmarks.