The Financial Lives survey

Financial Lives is our flagship, nationally representative survey of UK consumers.

It provides information about:

• consumers’ attitudes towards managing their money
• the financial products they have
• their experiences of engaging with financial services firms

It is unique in the combination of its design, breadth, and size. As a tracking survey, it provides evidence of how things are changing from the point of view of the consumer. 

Our first survey ran in April 2017, our second in February 2020, and our third in May 2022. In 2023 we also ran a shorter recontact survey, the Financial Lives cost of living (Jan 2023) recontact survey, to provide more targeted insights. The Financial Lives survey therefore makes it easy to compare how UK adults’ product holdings, finances and experiences have changed over time.

For each survey we have published a report, as well as using the data in more focused publications. Being able to understand the changing consumer landscape is key to delivering our consumer protection and competition objectives. The survey data helps us to identify harm and improve consumer outcomes. The data also provides valuable insights for the financial services industry, the Government, other regulators, policymakers, consumer bodies and academics.

Resources library

As part of our commitment to be more transparent[3] in the way we work, we have opened up the results of the survey for wider use by others. For each iteration of the Financial Lives survey, as well as the main and other reports, we publish the full questionnaire, the technical report and multi-volume data tables. These can be found on the pages for the relevant year, with a summary of the available documents in the Resources library[4].

Raw data from the Financial Lives surveys can be accessed by applying to the Consumer Data Research Centre (CDRC)[5].