Op-Ed: Language Inclusion Should be Banks' Focus

Speaking exclusively to Finance Chief, Head of Growth Tom Moran at LanguageLine Solutions explains in this op-ed how retail banking should focus more on language inclusivity to ensure that no customer gets left behind. 

Capturing the untapped million: Why language inclusion is retail banking’s next growth strategy

For the past decade, retail banking has been beating the technology and innovation drum, pouring billions into sleek apps, automated onboarding and AI-driven chatbots. 

Yet, a stark reality remains: as the sector continues its digital transformation, almost one million adults remain unbanked in the UK alone. While digital-first strategies have expanded access for the majority, they have simultaneously exposed a widening gap in accessibility.

The primary barrier is rarely a lack of smartphones; it is a barrier of language. For the millions of UK residents with Limited English Proficiency (LEP), navigating complex financial jargon on a screen is a significant challenge. 

A recent FCA study on financial access highlighted this clearly, finding that language and literacy challenges rank among the most prominent barriers to entry for underbanked consumers.

The hurdle isn't just navigating onboarding; the research highlighted that a vast majority of LEP consumers routinely struggle to comprehend both written and verbal information, rendering standard digital forms and account disclosures functionally unusable. 

This creates severe friction: identity verification stalls, affordability conversations become less accurate and customers struggle to understand fees and interest rates. The resulting spike in repeat contacts and extended handling times bloats operational costs and places heavy pressure on frontline staff.

Historically, financial institutions viewed language access as a reactive compliance box to tick, typically resulting in a repository of translated PDFs buried deep within a website. Today, progressive finance leaders are turning this paradigm on its head. 

True language inclusion is not an administrative operational expense or a corporate social responsibility initiative. It is a powerful commercial strategy to capture an untapped market share, drive operational efficiency and fuel lifetime customer value.

The invisible operational risks

When banks fail to provide native-language capabilities, they introduce systemic operational and regulatory risks within their ecosystem. Out of sheer necessity, many LEP individuals are forced to rely on friends or family members to translate complex banking matters. The FCA explicitly recognises that over-indexing on these informal, untrained interpreters creates severe vulnerabilities.

For the consumer, it compromises personal confidentiality and opens the door to potential financial exploitation or fraud. For the bank, relying on a third party to translate sophisticated product terms means there is no guarantee that genuine, legally sound informed consent has actually been obtained.

To mitigate this risk, forward-thinking institutions are shifting away from informal translation and embedding professionally translated content, qualified remote interpreters and multilingual support directly into their digital, telephone and branch channels.

Moving to an authenticated, professional language framework protects vulnerable consumers while giving risk and compliance officers greater confidence in the integrity of the customer journey.

The commercial opportunities

When executed effectively, a comprehensive language strategy transitions directly into a powerful engine for commercial growth. Every underbanked individual represents an immediate opportunity to capture lifelong customer value. 

By actively communicating with LEP communities in their native languages, forward-thinking retail banks gain access to a massive, highly motivated demographic requiring everything from current accounts and high-yield savings to mortgages and business banking.

In today’s “trust economy” - where banks compete on confidence as much as products – seamless language inclusion accelerates both customer acquisition and long-term retention. 

Multilingual communities are inherently interconnected; when a bank delivers an intuitive, native language experience, it triggers a ripple effect through community referrals, unlocking entire family networks, generational wealth and local business networks.

Historically, finance chiefs viewed language services through the lens of operational overhead, assuming it required a massive investment in multilingual branch staff. Today, technology has completely flipped the script.

Large incumbent banks do not need a wholesale technology replacement; language capabilities can be integrated directly into existing customer engagement platforms and CRMs via APIs.

By scaling linguistic infrastructure dynamically through automated workflows and on-demand professional interpreting, forward-thinking finance leaders can transform a legacy cost centre into a scalable growth lever.

ROI is actively measured through increased conversion, lower application abandonment, fewer complaints and reduced compliance risk, delivering a measurable bottom-line return.

Unlocking the LEP market

To transform language from a compliance box into a genuine growth lever, executive leaders should deploy a clear, data-driven strategy. 

It begins with the data. Banks should analyse exactly where customers abandon digital onboarding journeys, pinpoint where language-related complaints arise and track the languages most frequently requested in contact centres to map both commercial opportunity and regulatory exposure.

From there, high-impact customer journeys can be prioritised. Instead of attempting to translate an entire legacy architecture, embed professional linguistic support into critical friction points – be that onboarding, fraud warnings, or lending disclosures. 

Success can then be measured using hard commercial growth markers, from customer acquisition and conversion rates to lifetime customer value.

The demographic profile of the UK continues to evolve rapidly. Banks that treat language inclusion as a strategic capability rather than a compliance obligation will be better positioned to win market share, strengthen trust and deliver consistently better customer outcomes.