The Future(s) of Finance. A report from Rob Estreitinho at Salmon Labs.
This is a fascinating read from a fresh perspective: the consumers. It takes a close look at how consumers relate to money and how that relationship will continue to evolve across future generations.
For us, as leaders in wealth, it’s a looking glass into how we can adapt to better communicate with our customers and, importantly, future customers as their relationships with money, wealth, debt and investment begin to form.
But for me, as a parent of two, this report was an emotional tug too. It opens by addressing children's needs and how to raise younger generations growing up in a cashless society. Posing the question: What does that mean for them? It made me think, how can I help educate as a parent and a leader in wealth?
The report also shares research on how consumers across the generations understand debt, retirement, and even wealth dysmorphia, the distorted perception of one's financial situation regardless of wealth or income.
As with many things, the report raised more questions than it answers, and that’s the point: to push those of us in wealth to make better decisions and communicate with a deeper understanding of our consumers.
As Rob explains in his short accompanying video,
“Money is a big part of people's lives, and I think there’s a duty of responsibility if you are in this space to help people manage and relate to their money and think about their money in the best possible way you can.”
And it’s this simple yet poignant reminder of why we do what we do. It’s about responsibility, and I think sometimes, when it feels like we’re in the trenches of client sales and marketing, we need to return to this very fact.
Let’s take a look at the future(s) of finance
1. Cashless Childhoods: Raising the very first truly cashless generation
Is our world really set up to educate our young people on how to develop a positive, smart or even healthy relationship with money when all they see are numbers on a screen?
As a parent of two young children, these stats were a huge eye-opener for me:
Only 9% of payments in the UK are done in cash, compared to 48% 10 years ago.
61% of UK children aged 10-15 use apps to manage their pocket money
Only 14% of children report learning about money management from their bank
72% of parents believe their child doesn’t understand the value of money
So, what should we as ‘people in finance’ be asking ourselves?
What does a cashless society mean for how children perceive the value of money?
If cashless payments make people feel less in control, does that erode brand trust over time?
How can we educate future generations on the value of money?
If kids learn less about money by doing, will abstract critical thinking become more important?
To what extent is it the job of businesses vs formal education, to teach people how to think about money?
How are we going to start addressing these issues? Not just from a ‘people in finance’ perspective, but as parents and role models.
2. Forever Action Bias
“Retirement sounds great until you realise people see it as less of an option by necessity or choice”
On reading this, I asked myself,
Have we built an industry on a promise that we’re going to struggle to keep?
Is retirement becoming a privilege rather than an expectation for most Brits?
How many Brits can realistically expect to retire?
The honest answer is not many, and the gap between hope and reality is widening fast. Here's the picture that Rob’s data paints:
The retirement expectation gap
Standard Life's 2025 Retirement Voice report found that the gap between when Brits want to retire (age 62) and when they expect to retire (age 67) has now grown to five years and is widening. That's before factoring in those who won't retire at all.
The "never retiring" cohort is growing
30% of UK workers believe they will need or want to continue working even after they start receiving pension income. Boomers are the most likely generation to expect to work in retirement, at 36% according to Smart Pension, lining up closely with Rob's figures on Gen X and unretired boomers.
Confidence in retiring comfortably is very low
Only 12% of UK workers are fully confident they will save enough to retire comfortably. Nearly half (49%) believe economic challenges will definitely make it harder for their generation to retire well.
And, the savings reality is bleak
Almost half of all pensioners (49%, around 5.8 million people) have less than £10,000 in savings, according to the Centre for Ageing Better. And the full state pension currently falls almost £3,000 short of what's needed even for a minimum retirement living standard. Ouch!
The result? Younger generations are adjusting expectations downward
Around 12% of millennials aged 18–24 believe they will never retire, and 38% of working-age adults now expect to have a worse standard of living in retirement than they currently enjoy.
The question now becomes: As an industry helping people retire not just comfortably but well, are we helping enough people at all, and how can we keep our promise?
3. Debt as Self-Promise: The rise of Buy Now Pay Later
Debt has become a dirty word, and I understand why; nobody likes owing money, but context matters enormously.
Government debt funds the infrastructure that keeps nations running. Business debt drives growth and innovation. And a mortgage? That's simply a long-term promise to yourself that one day, you'll own your own home.
But, debt, at its best, is a bet on your future self, and what happens when that logic gets applied to a pair of trainers or a new outfit?
Rob’s stark data on Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) shows the quiet rewriting of our relationship with spending.
BNPL is marketed as flexibility: a smarter, more convenient way to spread the cost of things you were going to buy anyway. And sometimes, genuinely, that's exactly what it is. Used well, BNPL helps people manage cash flow without resorting to high-interest credit cards.
But the data from Rob Estreitinho's The Future(s) of Finance suggests something more complex is happening beneath the surface:
38% of BNPL users say shopping feels 'less financially real' when using it
66% spent money on things they wouldn't have bought otherwise
31% have lost track of what payments they currently owe
24% made late payments in 2024 (a dramatic rise year on year)
Among Gen Z and millennials, that late payment figure climbs to 39% and 35%, respectively
When money becomes abstract, so does consequence.
The mortgage analogy falls down here because mortgage debt builds towards something tangible: equity, security, ownership. Unlike BNPL debt, which at its worst builds towards a wardrobe full of things you didn't really need and a credit record quietly taking the hit.
So, is BNPL the sub-prime mortgage crisis in slow motion? Or is it something more nuanced?
Is debt evolving into a new kind of self-investment? A way for people to back themselves into a better future version of who they want to be. The answer probably lies somewhere in between, and the distinction matters enormously, not just for consumers, but for those of us working in wealth.
The people using BNPL today are the wealth management clients of tomorrow.
The financial habits, beliefs, and relationships with money they're forming right now, and the way they think about spending, saving, risk, and reward, will shape how they invest and plan for decades to come.
As a CMO in wealth, this is what I think about. How do we communicate the value of long-term financial thinking to a generation that has grown up being told they can have it now and pay later? How do we make wealth feel as accessible and as immediate as a checkout button without losing the rigour that actually builds it?
4. Wealth Dysmorphia: When Enough Never Feels Like Enough
There are many areas of life where we feel we don't have enough. But when it comes to money, that feeling can take on a life of its own.
Wealth dysmorphia is the phenomenon where, despite genuine evidence of financial security or stability, people still feel they don't have enough and never will. Our perception of our own financial reality becomes distorted, provoking feelings of insecurity, fear and chronic anxiety about the future.
And if you're thinking that sounds like something that only affects people who are genuinely struggling, think again.
Rob's research shows wealth dysmorphia cuts across income levels and generations:
43% of Gen Z and 41% of millennials experience money dysmorphia
80% of those affected feel they are behind on their finances
And yet 50% describe themselves as financially stable while simultaneously feeling they can't keep pace
I'll be honest: I've felt this myself.
That creeping sense that, however much you save, plan or put away, it somehow still won't be enough.
I suspect most people reading this have too, whether they'd admit it or not. So where is it coming from?
Social media plays a significant role. We are constantly exposed to curated displays of wealth: the holidays, the homes, the lifestyles, and however rationally we know these images are filtered and selective, they set an invisible benchmark that's almost impossible not to measure ourselves against.
Which raises questions that I find genuinely unsettling:
· At what point do social media comparisons create such widespread distortion that we lose trust in whether anyone truly owns what they claim to own?
· When the performance of wealth becomes indistinguishable from wealth itself, what does that do to our collective sense of financial reality?
And that brings me to what I think is one of the most important questions in this entire report:
· Is the future of financial education as much about psychology as it is about practical advice?
Because if people are making financial decisions from a place of fear, distortion, and comparison rather than clarity, no amount of ISA guidance or pension-planning content is going to move the needle. We need to address the emotional architecture of how people relate to money, not just the mechanics of it.
And for those of us communicating about wealth for a living, that's a fundamental shift in how we think about our role.
5. DIYstopia: When too much access becomes a burden
There's something very appealing about the idea of taking control of your own financial future. No middlemen, no fees, no waiting for an appointment with an adviser and definitely no judgement. Just you, your phone and the power to make your own decisions.
But with a growing trend in DIY investors following social media influencers and YouTube Gurus and taking their financial futures into their own hands, is there a cognitive burden when it comes to people’s money? Will the consequences of too much access create new forms of generational trauma?
As Rob puts it in his report, “When the power’s completely in your hands, so are the consequences of when things go wrong.”
And right now it feels like there’s a lot of power shifting into a lot of hands, very quickly. But should we trust them all?
In 2024, 145 million people used stock trading apps, up 47% year on year.
Young investors now hold 36% of assets in self-directed apps
One the one hand, this is democratisation, and yet,
Only 27% can correctly answer 5/7 financial knowledge questions
Only 14% of UK 18-24s passed a financial literacy test
45% of self-directed investors in high-risk products don’t view ‘losing money’ as a risk.
The stats are really quite something, but the one I found most worrying.
75% of respondents trust financial advice shared on TikTok.
That’s three-quarters of people making real, life-changing, financial decisions based on content created by people with no regulatory oversight, no duty of care and in many cases influenced by financial incentives to promote the very product they’re recommending.
This isn’t just about financial literacy; it’s a cognitive burden, especially for young people with little or no life experience.
When every decision rests entirely on your own shoulders, with no professional safety net, no framework for understanding risk, the psychological weight is enormous. And when things go wrong, it can leave a mark.
Are we witnessing the early stages of a new kind of generational financial trauma?
A generation that reached for independence, got burned, and emerges with a lasting distrust of markets, institutions and even themselves? But when they grow up, they’ll need professional advice, so,
How can a financial services brand influence new narratives around trust in investments?
Well, that trust starts with how we show up now, long before they become clients.
So, what does the future of finance actually look like?
If Rob's research tells us anything, it's that the relationship between people and money is changing faster than our industry is keeping up.
We have a generation growing up cashless, unable to feel the weight of what they spend. We have millions quietly accepting that retirement may never come. We have credit products that make consequences feel abstract, wealth comparisons that distort reality, and financial advice being served up between dance videos on TikTok.
These aren't separate trends. They're connected threads in the same story: a story about trust, access, education and what it means to feel financially secure in a world that makes money increasingly invisible.
For those of us in wealth, the opportunity is as significant as the challenge. Because every one of these pain points: the anxiety, the confusion and the distrust represents a moment where our industry could show up differently. Not just as product providers, but as educators, communicators and trusted guides through a financial landscape that has never felt more complicated.
The future clients we're trying to reach are already forming the beliefs, habits and biases, many from unreliable sources, that will shape every financial decision they make for the rest of their lives.
The question isn't whether the future of finance is changing. It's whether we're changing fast enough to keep up.