What the Collaborative Challenge Model Gets Right
Collaboration between industry and academia is often seen as essential to innovation, but in practice, it can be difficult to get right. The Future Finance Collaborative Challenge Programme offers a model that is delivering measurable results.
Where the model came from
The programme wasn’t built on assumption. It emerged from 25 hours of structured interviews across the UK financial services ecosystem, spanning banks, insurers, fintechs, advisors and accelerators.
The question was simple: what is really getting in the way of technology adoption?
The findings challenged expectations. The primary barriers weren’t access to technology or funding, they were human:
Limited academic insight in industry conversations
Weak cross-functional problem-solving capability
A tendency to move too quickly to solutions without fully defining the problem
In response, the programme adopted a structured facilitation model based on the Design Council’s Double Diamond. This creates space for both divergent problem definition and convergent solution development, always bringing together multidisciplinary teams across commercial, technical, operational, legal and academic, to work on shared challenges.
The format is flexible, ranging from one-day sessions to multi-week deep dives, but the core methodology remains consistent.
Over the past three years, the programme has delivered:
20 Collaborative Challenges
95 participating organisations
1,400 workshop participants
95% of companies reporting a genuine innovation outcome
27% demonstrating increased readiness for future market shifts
What the challenges look like in practice
At the event, participants heard directly from two recent challenge teams, leveraging the insights developed for the Collaborative Challenge Sprints
Productivity brought together Matt Jones, Legal Director at Burgess Salmon, and Andy King, Pension Specialist at Evelyn Partners, people who wouldn't ordinarily sit in the same problem-solving session. The group identified how a "double-checking" compliance culture creates hidden inefficiencies and invisible bottlenecks. Rather than replacing expertise, the use of AI to handle routine tasks was seen as a way to free up time for higher-value activities such as mentoring, relationship building, and strategic thinking that humans do best. One participant coined what's since become a useful heuristic: the "10, 5 times 2" principle, a simple idea that they replace a group of 10 people from the same team with two people from each of five different functions, and the quality of thinking changes fundamentally.
The Digital Pound challenge, led by researchers from Nottingham Business School and the University of the West of England, tackled a question the Bank of England hasn't fully answered yet: what would it take for households and businesses to actually trust and use a digital currency? The group surfaced themes around data privacy, governance, liability, and inclusive design, with a compelling recommendation of a "keep the pound" framing: positioning a digital pound as an enhancement to existing money, not a replacement for it.
Importantly, these challenges are not theoretical exercises. Both challenges produced actionable outputs that are ready to take forward into product development, policy conversations, and organisational change programmes. All outputs are available openly on the Future Finance website.
Summaries for 4 key challenges have been developed
Why Productivity Gains Stall in Financial Services
The Digital Pound Faces a Trust Deficit
Harnessing AI to Support Underserved Investors
Women Entrepreneurs Face a Finance Gap
Looking ahead: June Collaborative Challenge on Fraud Prevention
Fraud remains the largest crime type in the UK, with significant economic and societal impact:
£14 billion annual cost
92% of victims experiencing emotional or mental health effects
63% changing their financial behaviour afterwards
While progress has been made, particularly in reducing APP fraud, the nature of the threat is evolving. Average losses per victim are increasing, and fraudsters are shifting towards more sophisticated, higher-value scams, whilst much of the current effort still focuses on intervention late in the fraud journey, after harm has already occurred.
The June Collaborative Challenge will explore a different approach:
How might the UK financial services ecosystem, telecom providers and law enforcement collaborate more effectively to detect and prevent fraud earlier in the scam journey?
Critically, success won't come from financial services acting alone. If you're working in financial services, telecoms, cybersecurity, consumer protection, law enforcement, or you're a founder with relevant technology or insight, we want you in the room in June.
Get involved
The Collaborative Challenge Programme is not a traditional event. It is a structured working session designed to produce outputs and accountability, turning conversations into action.
To learn more about the programme and explore previous challenge outputs, visit the Future Finance website Accelerator for UK Financial Services | Future Finance
To discuss running a Collaborative Challenge within your organisation, contact: hello@future-finance.tech
You can read details regarding the June challenge and reserve a place here.