Alison is extending its "Financial Literacy as a Service" model to the UK through a three to six month pilot called Everyday Money UK, following an earlier rollout in Ireland. The scheme invites credit unions, building societies and other socially mandated financial institutions to become founding ambassadors, distributing free, CPD-accredited courses directly to their members and local communities.

The pilot curriculum spans credit and debt management, budgeting, fraud and scam awareness, and saving and investing, delivered through a mobile and desktop platform with real-time analytics on completions and engagement.

The pilot, confirmed by Alison, responds to Financial Conduct Authority data showing 6.5 million UK adults have low financial capability, with nearly 10 million struggling with basic financial numeracy and one in ten holding no emergency savings.

Alison, headquartered in Galway, Ireland, is a free online learning platform founded in 2007 that has grown to more than 50 million registered learners across 193 countries, offering more than 5,000 CPD-accredited courses. The pilot targets UK credit unions and building societies, mutually owned financial institutions that operate under a social mandate to serve local members rather than shareholders.

The structural driver behind Everyday Money UK is the trust gap between mainstream financial education campaigns and the community-level institutions best placed to reach financially excluded households, with Alison positioning credit unions and building societies as delivery partners rather than course publishers.

Olivia Cosgrove, head of government solutions, social impact and strategic projects at Alison, said credit unions and building societies "hold an unmatched level of trust within their local communities" and that the pilot provides "the infrastructure to deliver free, high-quality financial education right where it is needed most."

Cosgrove added that no single solution to financial illiteracy currently exists in the UK, describing Everyday Money UK as "the shared solution to this shared problem."

For the sector, the pilot confirms that financial literacy education is shifting from centralised government campaigns toward locally delivered, digitally distributed courses run through trusted community financial institutions.

Source: alison.com / fca.org.uk