The Chartered Insurance Institute (CII) has opened registration for the Disability Access Symposium 2026, a UK-wide event bringing together senior insurance leaders, charities and accessibility experts to address the accessibility of products and services for disabled customers and employees.
The event lands as the treatment of vulnerable customers, a category that includes many disabled consumers, remains a live focus of FCA supervision under the Consumer Duty.
The symposium runs during the week commencing October 5, 2026, combining in-person sessions with a series of virtual events, and is delivered in partnership with the UK's Disability and Access Ambassadors, a Cabinet Office-backed network of sector representatives set up to help businesses improve outcomes for disabled customers and staff.
Two in-person sessions anchor the week, the CII said. A full-day symposium takes place on Wednesday October 7 at PwC's Embankment office, expected to draw around 150 attendees for cross-sector discussion, followed by a lunchtime event on Thursday October 8 at Lloyd's of London for up to 100 participants. Virtual sessions will run throughout the week to widen access for those unable to attend in person, bringing together Disability and Access Ambassadors, charities and practitioners to share insight drawn from lived experience and research.
Confirmed speakers include Sir Charlie Mayfield of Keep Britain Working, CII chief executive Matthew Hill and Personal Finance Society board director Edward Grant, alongside representatives from organizations including the British Insurance Brokers' Association and several major UK insurers and financial services firms. Further speakers are to be announced ahead of the event.
The symposium is organized through the Disability and Access Ambassador programme, under which the Cabinet Office's Office for Equality and Opportunity appoints a voluntary representative in several sectors to drive accessibility improvements. Grant took up the insurance and financial planning ambassador role in 2025, succeeding Zurich's Peter Hamilton, who had continued work begun by the programme's inaugural insurance ambassador, Johnny Timpson. The role runs for a maximum three-year term and sits alongside equivalent ambassador positions in banking, retail and other sectors.
Grant said the symposium was intended to turn existing good practice into wider action across the sector. "The Disability Access Symposium is a catalyst for leaders who want to collaborate, drive real change, and accelerate accessibility across every sector," he said.
Hill linked the event to the CII's broader work on vulnerable customers and regulatory compliance. "The Chartered Insurance Institute is proud to support the Symposium. It complements our work to raise awareness of careers in insurance and financial planning, on supporting vulnerable customers, and helping firms meet their Consumer Duty obligations," he said.
The symposium offers a practical opportunity to benchmark their approach against peers on an issue that increasingly sits within formal regulatory expectations rather than voluntary best practice.
With the FCA's 2026 supervisory priorities already placing consumer understanding and fair outcomes at the centre of its agenda, the event gives firms a working forum to test how their accessibility efforts measure up against what regulators, charities and ambassadors are looking for, ahead of any future supervisory review of how Consumer Duty commitments to disabled and vulnerable customers are being met in practice.
The FCA's most recent Financial Lives survey, published in 2025 using May 2024 data, found that 26.4 million UK adults, or 49% of the adult population, showed at least one characteristic of vulnerability, with poor health among the four key drivers the regulator tracks. The same survey found that more than half of UK adults hold no protection insurance products at all, a gap that widens sharply among unemployed adults and those living in the most deprived areas of the country.
Meanwhile, a separate FCA review of 725 firms' treatment of vulnerable customers, published in March 2025, found that while many had made progress since the regulator's 2021 vulnerability guidance, a significant number still could not properly monitor or evidence outcomes for these customers.
The FCA has since described that gap as a central test of how well firms are implementing the Consumer Duty. More broadly, over 18,000 UK organizations have signed up to the government's separate Disability Confident employer scheme since its 2016 launch, though insurance-specific participation figures are not separately published, making direct sector benchmarking difficult and adding to the case for events like the symposium as a way for firms to compare notes.
Registration for both in-person sessions and the virtual programme is open now through the CII's website, the Institute said.
