Jasmine Birtles – Financial Expert interview – First direct interviews financial expert Jasmine Birtles for its ‘Colourful Lives’ report

Jasmine Birtles of MoneyMagpie presents  her Financial Expert interview – First direct interviews financial expert Jasmine Birtles for its ‘Colourful Lives’ report

To mark its 21st birthday, first direct commissioned the Future Foundation to explore and champion the unique individuals who make Britain great.  The resulting ‘Colourful Lives’ report is a celebration of all that’s individual, quirky and just plain eccentric.

first direct Head of Marketing, Paul Say, said: “The research shows Brits are proud of their nation, with traditional customs and festivals such as cheese rolling, bog snorkelling and toe wrestling cited by 57 per cent as the main reason Britain is so eccentric. One in every 100 people in the UK is officially registered as a Jedi Knight – a statistic which proves Brits aren’t afraid to be irreverent even about such routine things as the Census.

“It’s because our customers are so colourful that first direct does banking in black and white. We wanted to get under the skin of these interesting characters to find out just what makes them tick.”

The next biggest driver of our intrinsic eccentricity is the class system (35 per cent) while a third (32 per cent) say it’s because Britain is not truly European. A quarter (24 per cent) think being an island fosters quirky characters and one in ten (20 per cent) credit the monarchy. Just three per cent associate wealth with eccentricity in modern society.

When it comes to breaking away from the norm, two thirds (62.5 per cent) of us believe Britain is the most free-spirited, creative and non-conformist nation of the top five Western European countries*.

The research predicts a continued trend of appreciating the peculiar and irreverent. Brits will increasingly be attracted to people and brands that are not afraid to express themselves in a personable, quirky manner – a manner which reflects the colourful nature and the intrinsically alternative mindset of contemporary Britain