Investment Changes and Women's Financial Rights
Money Box
BBC
4.2 • 825 Ratings
🗓️ 10 January 2026
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sweeping changes to the way investments are recommended across the UK will start in April. This week the Financial Conduct Authority set out its plans. The regulator hopes they will encourage more people to invest their savings rather than keep them in cash. From April it will bring in what it calls 'targeted support'. That would allow firms to suggest how customers in different groups should manage their money. The FCA has also issued new guidance on how investments can be marketed and what warnings customers are given. Paul Lewis speaks to its Deputy Chief Executive Sarah Pritchard.
Just 50 years ago, women couldn’t apply for loan or get a mortgage without a man. That came to an end thanks to the Sex Discrimination Act which came into force in December 1975. We'll hear from Kath and Sue who remember what it was like at that time.
And a new scheme aimed at bringing down energy debt targets people who are moving home. We'll speak to Ofgem, the energy regulator, about that.
Presenter: Paul Lewis Reporters: Dan Whitworth and Eimear Devlin Researcher: Jo Krasner Editor: Jess Quayle Senior News Editor: Sara Wadeson
(First broadcast at 12pm Saturday 13th December 2025)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts. |
| 0:05.7 | Hello, you're about to listen to a BBC podcast, and I'm Ed Gamble, host of another BBC podcast, The Traitors Uncloaked. |
| 0:12.7 | But my show is available only on BBC Sounds, just like Ellis and John's Saturday bonus episodes, |
| 0:18.2 | The Pop Top Ten podcast with Scott Mills and Rylan, and comedy specials |
| 0:22.2 | from the likes of Harriet Kemsley, Susie Ruffel and Rommashranganathan. However, and maybe I'm biased, |
| 0:27.9 | it's really all about the traitors uncoaked. So for a whole bunch of exclusive scoops and podcasts, |
| 0:33.4 | listen only on BBC Sounds. Hello, welcome to this Moneybox podcast. |
| 0:38.2 | New proposals would let energy suppliers cut off the electricity and gas |
| 0:42.3 | if people who move home don't sign up with a new supplier within a week or so. |
| 0:48.2 | And it's hard to believe now, but 50 years ago, women couldn't borrow money without a man. |
| 0:54.8 | But first, better, not best, is how the financial regulator sums up the outcome for customers |
| 1:01.3 | of its plans to let banks and other financial firms give them what it calls targeted support. |
| 1:07.4 | The changes published this week by the Financial Conduct Authority will start in April and are intended to encourage more people to invest their savings rather than keeping them in cash. |
| 1:17.9 | But it admitted that although target support should put someone in a better position, it won't necessarily be the best. |
| 1:25.8 | Many listeners are concerned about what the changes will mean. |
| 1:28.8 | Deb is in her early 60s and saving up to help her sons by their first home. |
| 1:33.4 | I'm trying to do whatever I can as a parent to help my sons get on the property ladder. |
| 1:39.6 | So I'm not putting my bits that I can save at the risk of the stock market. |
| 1:44.8 | And particularly at a time when I think we all see the world's in a state of amazing flux |
| 1:49.5 | and it is more volatile than ever before. |
| 1:52.8 | And it may just happen to fall at the time when my sons have finally got enough to buy |
| 1:56.8 | their first home and then suddenly wish they suddenly don't have any more. |
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