Inclusive financial services: can the LGBTQ+ community be served better?

Pride Month got our Group Client Partner and LGBTQ+ ally, Kirstin Wilson, questioning how financial service companies could improve their engagement with LGBTQ+ communities. In this article, she reports back on her conversations with people who identify as LGBTQ+ about their experiences of banking, insurance and more. Discover the opportunities financial service providers have to go further…

It might sound obvious, but we can’t live without financial services. They’re fundamental to our lives – whether they’re helping us access our money, protect what’s important or enabling us to buy a home or plan our retirement.

With my mind often on how we support our financial services clients, Pride has been an opportunity for me to dig a little deeper into the challenges and opportunities around engaging with LGBTQ+ communities. It’s a pressing issue, with Experian finding that 62% of LGBTQIA+ respondents had experienced financial problems because of their gender identity or sexual orientation.

To understand the LGBTQ+ experience of accessing financial services – and what can be done to help these customers – I spoke to some friends, colleagues and clients in this community to understand these barriers and challenges better.

It’s clear that the UK has changed (mostly) for the better over the last two decades. We’ve seen:

• the repeal of Section 28 – a law preventing local authorities from ‘promoting homosexuality’ by discussing or acknowledging same-sex relationships
• laws to make discrimination based on sexuality or gender illegal
• civil partnerships and same-sex marriages legalised
• same-sex and unmarried couples allowed to adopt children.

Every year, hundreds of Pride events happen across the country. In this month alone, I’ve counted at least 75 events across the UK, from London to Londonderry, Stornoway to Pontypridd. And there are lots of companies, including those in financial services, showing their support and sponsoring events.

Financial services companies also feature high in The Stonewall Top 100 Employers list, and there lots of sector-specific initiatives such as the long-running InterBank Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT+) Forum aimed at greater inclusion for LGBTQ+ colleagues.

However, it’s also clear that equality before the law and an acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community is just a start. There’s a need to go further – to go from acceptance to empathy, from equality to equity, from winning minds to winning hearts (and loyalty).

A common theme that came up in my conversations is what I call the burden of disclosure – that LGBTQ+ customers are often forced to ‘out themselves’ again and again with institutions.

Customer privacy issues aside, each time a customer must ‘out themselves’ they’re placed in a potentially vulnerable situation. Whether the experience or reaction is positive, awkward or even terrible, there’s also a cumulative psychological pressure from repeatedly having to assert something personal and private that other customers don’t need to.

Staff need to be supported to empathise and understand what it feels like to individual customers. Unless they face those challenges in their own lives, it’s hard for them to know what the impact of their assumptions are on someone else.

When it comes to something as fundamental as using their own money, why should LGBTQ+ customers need to explain how they identify? It’s important to know what personal data is vital for business and what should be none of our business.

And, if customers are happy to share how they identify, can that information be used throughout the customer journey to personalise services and eliminate microaggressions?

Brands can also stand out for the LGBTQ+ community by making it psychologically safer to access products and services. This means making sure that every touchpoint is working to make them feel comfortable and understood.

For customer service teams, it could be as simple as not making gender assumptions based on the sound of someone’s voice – there’s a number of reasons why it may sound very different from their chosen pronouns.

This should extend to third-party services, such as builders. The principles of equity could be baked into SLAs and audited. For example, insurers could insist that builders have some level of sensitivity training. Whether a customer is trans or lesbian, they have the same right to a good service delivered without insensitive assumptions or ridicule, especially when people are entering their home and safe space.

Being explicit internally about the rights of LGBTQ+ colleagues is another important step – policies such as parental leave should be clear for everyone, regardless of how they identify.

I’ve worked on enough equality, diversity and inclusion projects to know that financial service companies genuinely care about the issues and are working towards becoming more diverse and inclusive across a range of characteristics.

However, there’s a real challenge faced by the 1.8 million LGBTQ+ adults in the UK when it comes to getting the customer journey they deserve when accessing banking and insurance services. We need to keep going with our journey towards equity by rigorously interrogating our assumptions and language at every customer touchpoint.