Age Discrimination in Financial Services: The United Kingdom Case

This paper asserts there can be no situation where a worker is more vulnerable or in a more precarious position than after suffering a work-related injury or contracting a work-related disease causing incapacity to work. It sets out the British system which imposes liability on employers to pay damages to employees who have suffered injury or disease because of their employer’s fault. Acknowledging the faults of this system, it looks at an International Labour Organisation publication which refers to systems in other states and supplements this by further research. It then returns to the ILO paper’s criteria for a good system and measures the British system against that criteria. Finally, it questions the fate of those whose incapacity is not work related. This paper considers age discrimination in financial services, focusing on the United Kingdom. It does this by examining the ‘Demographic transition Model’, population size and Age Dependency Ratio. Acknowledging the negative impact of age discrimination on national economic trends, it looks at the inactivity of older workers and how it has been tackled by the Equality Act 2010 and the Technical Guidance 2016. Therefore, this analysis defines older people both as vulnerable workers and vulnerable customers. Finally, it questions on the conflict in financial services between economic interests, equality and their link to population aging.