Chris Dick, CEO, Registry Trust
Thursday, 12th February 2026
Towards the end of 2025, the House of Commons Treasury Committee launched an inquiry into the Government’s new Financial Inclusion Strategy, seeking views from stakeholders to gauge whether ministers understand the true scale of the challenge of addressing financial exclusion, as well as what steps must be taken to make a meaningful difference to people’s lives.
The inquiry’s launch made clear that financial inclusion should be more than a box-ticking exercise; it must focus on real outcomes for people and businesses across the UK.
Registry Trust’s written evidence to that inquiry has just been published, setting out our perspective on how monetary judgment data can be better understood, improved and used to support financial inclusion.
Why judgment data matters
Judgment data captures the point at which financial difficulty has escalated into the courts. As at the end of Q4 2025, there were around 5.4 million judgments on the Register, with a total value of £13.0 billion. Nearly nine in ten remain unsatisfied. Far from being abstract statistics, these records reflect real people and small businesses experiencing financial stress that potentially affects access to credit, housing and opportunity.
While many judgments relate to modest sums, their impact can be lasting. A CCJ -satisfied or unsatisfied - can affect a person’s or a small business’s ability to access affordable credit for up to six years. This can have consequences not only for day-to-day financial management but also for future resilience and opportunity.
Our submission: practical reforms and better use of data
In our written evidence, we highlighted how judgment data could play a more effective role in supporting inclusion and recovery. Key points include:
- Mandatory reporting of satisfied judgments and a register of partial settlements so that efforts to repay are fairly reflected in data that lenders and policymakers use
- Improving data quality and utility for commercial judgments, including by consistently capturing company identifiers
- Considering fairness for judgments arising from coercive debt situations, including where economic abuse has been a factor
- Using judgment data over time to inform policy.
These proposals are grounded in the practical realities of the data and the experiences of individuals and small businesses whose financial situations evolve over time.
Looking ahead: data that supports inclusion, not exclusion
Making financial inclusion work in practice means understanding not just the causes of financial difficulty, but also what happens after a person or business has experienced it. Judgments are a legal milestone that can have long-term repercussions, but they also offer insight.
Registry Trust welcomes the opportunity to engage further with the Treasury Committee and other stakeholders as this work progresses. We hope our evidence contributes to a more nuanced and effective policy approach - one that uses data to support inclusion and opportunity, not just measurement.
Read the full inquiry details on the Treasury Committee website - Financial inclusion ‘must not be box-ticking exercise’: new inquiry launches - Committees - UK Parliament