Thesis

Older and ethnic minority population’s access to online financial services in the UK : human, technological and societal issues

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Awarding institution
  • University of Strathclyde
Date of award
  • 2026
Thesis identifier
  • T17692
Person Identifier (Local)
  • 202185901
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Qualification Name
Department, School or Faculty
Abstract
  • This thesis investigates the diverse challenges encountered by older and ethnic minority population’s access to online financial services. Digital services which incorporate financial transactions are considered as online financial services. Obstacles faced by older people who are aged 65 and over, whose first language is not English and those from ethnic minority groups, have not been addressed in previous research. Therefore, in order to bridge these gaps, this study conducted semi-structured interviews to identify older people’s impediments to using digital financial services. Through the interviews with older people and intermediaries, several key challenges that could deter older people from adopting and using such services were established, for example, fear, cultural traits and linguistic challenges. The qualitative data led to the development of personas which assisted in developing a theoretical tool. This could be utilised by finance service providers and other stakeholders to quantify the broad factors that could contribute to the challenges faced by older people in accessing online financial services. This tool could also be used to identify unique and prevalent challenges faced by multiple ethnic minority groups. This study also created a categorised representation of the factors identified through a review of the literature that could be deployed to determine the various factors in relation to older people’s access to digital financial services. Subsequently, the qualitative data was mapped onto this diagram to identify novel factors, to explore factors not disclosed through this study, and to recognise the factors corroborated through interviews. As a result, an updated version of the visual representation of the factors was created. Not only does this study enhance our knowledge but also the contributions of this study would assist service providers to develop interventions which would address the obstacles faced by older people, especially those from ethnic minority groups.
Advisor / supervisor
  • Chowdhury, G. G. (Gobinda G.)
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