Project Summary

Many UK households have few emergency savings, making unexpected costs or changes in income harder to manage. This challenge may be particularly relevant to credit union customers with limited financial headroom or irregular incomes. The project will use securely managed transaction data from credit union customers on Incuto’s platform to understand how saving behaviour changes over time. It will examine saving broadly, with particular attention to payroll-linked saving, where part of an employee’s pay is transferred into savings. 

The project will develop a new, explainable AI framework comprising linked specialist models. Rather than treating all saving behaviour as the same, different models will focus on when people start, continue, reduce, pause, withdraw or resume saving. The framework will combine longer-term monthly patterns with day-to-day transaction activity, capturing broader patterns and immediate changes. 

The project will also explore how saving behaviour relates to financial resilience, using indicators such as limited financial headroom, irregular income, repeated borrowing and missed payments. Continuing to save will not automatically be viewed as beneficial, nor will pausing or withdrawing be viewed as failure. The findings could help credit unions, employers, financial-service providers and policymakers design more flexible, responsible and effective support. 

Partner Organisation