Insights: Is financial services failing Gen Z?

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**Kate Moody** (1:10)
Hello, and welcome to Fintech Insider Insights. I'm Kate Moody, Customer Strategy Director at 11FS. Gen Z is often portrayed as a generation that needs to get better with money.
We're talking about the generation born from the late 1990s into the early 2010s, many of whom are now navigating their first major financial decisions. But the picture is much more complicated than that.
New research from ZBD found that 99% of Gen Z respondents say financial education is important. The highly engaged digital payments expect rewards from the products they use, and 68% still say they trust traditional banks. But wanting to understand money doesn't necessarily mean knowing how everything works. Separate research from Creditspring found significant gaps in younger adults' understanding of credit, while 68% of Gen Z respondents in ZBD's research say they often feel stressed about managing their finances. And all of this is happening against a very different economic backdrop, with younger people buying homes later, carrying more student debt, and increasingly relying on family support to reach major financial milestones. So on this week's episode of Fintech Insider, we're asking, does Gen Z really have a financial literacy problem, or does financial services have a Gen Z problem? To help us unpack it, I'm joined by a great panel of guests. First up, we've got Neil Kadagathur, co-founder and CEO of Creditspring. Neil, welcome to the show. Could you please introduce yourself to our listeners? Tell us a bit about Creditspring, please.

**Neil Kadagathur** (2:33)
Yeah, hello, I'm Neil Kadagathur. Thanks for having me. So, Creditspring, we are in the corner for the backbone of Britain, key workers, the underpaid but important parts of society. And our goal is to help them get back onto their financial feet and stay there. And we do that by offering a series of similar but different memberships. And the memberships offer people support in the short-term in the form of no-interest, short-term loans. And we surround them with long-term support in the form of financial education, benefits finders and credit building tools.

**Kate Moody** (3:08)
Awesome. Well, thank you very much for taking the time to join us today and looking forward to hearing your perspectives. Also joining us is Zeynep Guzel, Risk Analyst at DRW.
Zeynep, you're also our representative of Gen Z on the show for today. I mean, apologies for revealing your age. Our producer is very naughty. Would you mind telling us a little bit about yourself, please, and DRW?

**Zeynep Guzel** (3:27)
Hi Kate, I'm Zeynep. I work as a Risk Analyst at GIZ Blue. What I do there is I work with mathematical models, and we try to quantify financial uncertainty and assess probability to future events so that our investors can make better judgments when they're investing their money. Also, you can get naughty with me. I don't mind that that's all.

**Kate Moody** (3:53)
Awesome. Well, yes. Thank you so much for joining us.
We have a welcome back to the podcast for Diana Kamil-Salmon, Associate Director of Fair4All Finance. Diana, great to have you back on the show. Would you mind again reminding our listeners about who you are and what you're doing, maybe a bit about Fair4All Finance as well, please.

**Diana Kamil-Salmon** (4:09)
Thanks, Kate. Thank you to Fintech Insider for having me back. I work for Fair4All Finance. We are a not-for-profit organization that was set up by the government in 2019
Our mission is to boost financial inclusion in England. We're specifically focused on thinking about how can we get financial services to create products and services that fit the lives of everyday consumers and thinking about things like inclusion, financial resilience, and financial well-being.

**Kate Moody** (4:40)
Awesome. Likewise, thank you very much for taking the time to join us today. Let's jump in.
Okay, so much for us to cover today. Let's maybe start with the bigger picture. How different is the financial life Gen Z is entering compared with previous generations? Gen Z is often characterized as being a financial inexperienced, maybe even financially illiterate. That seems very harsh to me, but Zeynep, what's your take?