The Financial Research Survey (FRS)

The financial world is changing quickly. Consumers expect different things, and there are new rules that companies need to follow.  To succeed, financial services firms need to adapt. The Ipsos Financial Research Survey (FRS) can help your organisation thrive in this challenging environment.  We've been analysing Britain’s financial market and consumer behaviour since 1977, and we provide the insights that leading financial institutions rely on, helping them stay up-to-date and make smart decisions.

The industry benchmark for financial market research data

The FRS delivers trusted analytics on retail financial holdings, acquisitions, and consumer usage and behaviour within Britain.  It provides a single source of data covering critical retail financial markets - including banking, savings, investments, lending, insurance, and pensions – which, combined with the FRS’s demographic data, helps companies better understand and solve a range of challenges. 

Whether it’s building market share, understanding customer preferences or aligning with regulatory changes, the FRS can provide a quantitative data-driven solution.

About the survey

Annually, we engage a nationally representative sample of 50,000 adults (aged 16+), interviewing using an innovative hybrid approach combining online and telephone methodologies.  Data is continuously collected and reported each month, ensuring our clients always have the latest, accurate view of the marketplace.

There are several ways you can unlock the power of FRS:

• Annual Subscription: Ideal for continuously tracking trends with the most up-to-date data via our Askia platform.
• Market Reports: Created by industry experts, offering deep insight into products, customer groups, and competing brands.
• Bespoke Solutions: Tailored to address specific business queries and delivered via a variety of options including reports, data tables and visualisations, or workshops.
• Thematic Reports: Dive into broader financial or societal topics like vulnerability or the cost-of-living, enhancing your understanding of macro impacts.
• Self-Serve Data Exploration: Perfect for ad hoc, complex analysis, allowing you to access comprehensive datasets at your convenience.
• Money Talks: Delve into the 'why' behind customer behaviour or market trends through our online qualitative community, ideal for exploring greater insight into the latest hot topics.

Why the FRS is unique

The FRS is a single-source, holistic view of consumers’ financial wallets, which can be analysed in any number of ways so that you can:

• Stay ahead with market sizing and competitive intelligence, featuring full coverage of all financial providers, including monthly data updates, new product performance, peer-group benchmarking.
• Get unparalleled insights into customers, through segmentation, customer financial profile, share of wallet and demographic cross-analysis.
• Elevate brand positioning by metrics such as awareness, consideration, new business, crossholding, intentions to switch, choice drivers, and brand trust.
• Optimise channel strategies by leveraging insights into usage, preference, arrangement methods, online vs. offline, and satisfaction by channel type.
• Cultivate long-term loyalty with analytics on satisfaction and NPS, retention, CX outcomes, unmet needs, and product cross-selling.
• Gain a deeper understanding of regulatory requirements, particularly the drivers of potential vulnerability and the Consumer Duty framework.
• And our team of industry experts excel at providing timely insights and customised solutions to meet your specific needs.

Ready to take the next step?

The Financial Research Survey is subscribed to by most of the UK’s major providers of financial services, while its custom-built structure means it can benefit organisations of every size.

Contact Neil Killey, Financial Research Survey, Programme Lead, for a preliminary consultation, at [email protected]; or for general enquiries please email [email protected].