Brokers want personal finance taught earlier, arguing the knowledge gap is making mortgage advice harder to deliver
Mortgage advisers are calling for financial education to be built into the school curriculum, warning young people are reaching adulthood with little understanding of credit, savings, or the mortgage process – and that the gap is making first-time buyers harder to serve.
Research published by Santander UK in January 2025 found only 26% of young adults reported receiving any financial education at school, leaving an estimated four million without a fundamental understanding of money management.
Tim Spencer, managing director at Optimus Mortgages, raised the issue when asked what would most improve the market for clients, pointing to failures in financial literacy that extend well beyond the mortgage application itself.
A generation locked out of credit
Spencer told Mortgage Introducer the wider problem starts with the industry itself. "I think getting the general public educated as to what sort of options are out there would improve things, and maybe the lenders need to do more advertising of themselves," he said. "If they're not advertising, that's telling me something that the market is a little bit tough."
Spencer argued the problem isn't limited to any one product area. "It's a lack of education from an early age, but also just generally about the products and services available," he said.
The issue became personal for Spencer when he recently tried to help his 18-year-old daughter build a credit profile, only to find she was turned down even for a basic card.
"She is only 18 and it was horrible, because she's got absolutely no credit and she's a newbie," he said. "I said, well, look, we'll just get a basic credit card, so like a £250 limit, and there was nothing available."
He said even higher-risk lenders rejected her application. "You just think, how do people actually get on the market?"
Why aren't young people taught about money?
Paul Hampton, owner and mortgage consultant at Approved Mortgage Solutions, told Mortgage Introducer education is the single biggest issue he saw in his own client meetings. He pointed to repeated cases involving the Lifetime ISA – a government-backed savings account that allows first-time buyers under 40 to receive a 25% bonus on savings put towards a deposit, up to a maximum bonus of £1,000 a year.
"I still see people where they've got £10,000 and it's not in a Lifetime ISA," he said. "I say, well, if that was in a Lifetime ISA, you could have another £2,500."
Hampton would like to do more to address the gap directly. "I would love to do some more education. We've run a few first-time buyer courses. We sometimes do talks for the graduates at university."
But he is clear the benefit of school-based education would not be immediate. "I think for me, education is a big thing, particularly in the North East," he said. "If you can teach somebody how to use a mortgage and save properly and go through all the affordability in advance, then it makes the home buying process much easier when it comes to it."
The concern is echoed elsewhere in the market. In a previous Mortgage Introducer report on first-time buyer affordability strategies, Denni Tyson, founder of DT Financial, said a lack of financial literacy and knowledge was a recurring issue among first-time buyers, who often look to their adviser to guide them through every stage of the process.
Ashley Lambert, mortgage and protection adviser at Your Mortgage Hub, went further, arguing the education system itself could take a more hands-on approach, saying young people need to understand credit cards, loans, interest rates, and how minimum payments can snowball into much larger debts.
Calls for education to start at school
The pattern across these accounts points to a systemic issue rather than one confined to any single broker's client base. The UK government announced in November financial education would be added to the primary school curriculum and strengthened at secondary level, following long-running pressure from across the financial sector.
On timing, Hampton suggested a staged approach rather than a single intervention. He argued secondary school pupils could be introduced to basic concepts such as loan-to-value and mortgage terms, with more complex topics layered in later. "You could effectively drip feed buying a house into the education system the same way that maths is," he said. "You don't teach people complex calculations on day one. You teach them how to add up and how to take away."
He said graduates were, in his experience, the most receptive audience because they have some life experience and a sense of their future earnings, but that earlier exposure would still help. "The process of buying a house, not just the mortgage part, should be included in the national curriculum at some level," he said. "It would make our job much easier when we come to see first-time buyers, and it stops people making mistakes as well."
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