# Sideways > Sideways is a behavioural design practice for regulated businesses in the UK. We make trustworthiness measurable and designable through the Seven Trust Signals framework, working at the points where trust is won or lost. Founded by Daljit Singh, Nicolas Roope and Stephen Barber. Based in London, working across UK financial services. ## What we do We design for trustworthiness, not trust. Trust is what the customer gives you, a response, a feeling, a willingness to come back. Trustworthiness is what you are, the properties of the system you have built. Those can be designed, and once they are designed, trust tends to follow. The thinking is rooted in Onora O'Neill's work on trust and trustworthiness. We help regulated businesses reduce churn, manage risk, and meet FCA Consumer Duty obligations by redesigning the moments where customers hesitate, escalate, or quietly leave. The work blends service design, brand behaviour, UX, and responsible AI. ## The Seven Trust Signals We measure trustworthiness across seven observable, designable signals. Each has a direct commercial consequence. - Clarity. How easy it is for an everyday person to understand what is happening. Measured through terms-and-conditions readability, number of steps in key journeys, jargon count. - Reliability. How often the service works when people need it. Measured through status pages, outage frequency, app crash reports, login problems. - Fairness. Whether pricing, fees and decisions feel proportionate and explainable. Measured through fee changes, complaints about charges, dispute outcomes. - Care. How people feel treated when something goes wrong. Measured through ombudsman outcomes, complaint sentiment, support reviews. - Friction. How much effort it takes to get simple things done. Measured through number of steps in key tasks, time to reach a human, drop-off data. - Honesty. How openly the firm communicates change, risk and problems. Measured through change notices, clarity of incident updates, transparency reports. - Consistency. Whether today's experience matches yesterday's, and the time before that. Measured through variance in complaint volumes across channels, difference in treatment between new and existing customers, gap between stated policy and actual outcomes. ## Consumer Duty The FCA used to ask firms "did you follow the rules?" Now it asks "did the customer end up better off?" That shift, behavioural in its bones, has turned trustworthiness from an aspiration into a regulatory requirement. Consumer Duty went live in July 2023 for open products and July 2024 for closed books. 2026 is the year the regime moved from implementation to active supervision and enforcement. Sideways has six entry points into Consumer Duty work, each designed to plug into a firm's own customer material: - The Trust Signal Programme. Behavioural trust training for staff in regulated firms. Five movements: Read, Feel, Frame, Make, Embed. Scenario-based, drawn from the firm's own evidence. - Vulnerability Design. Treats vulnerability as a felt state, not a tick-box. A Vulnerability Read audits current approach against the seven signals, followed by a Vulnerability Standard the whole firm can use. - Disclosure Design. Redesigns the moments where a firm asks the customer to disclose financial distress or vulnerability, so the instrument itself stops punishing honesty. - Listening Audit. Audits a firm's voice-of-customer infrastructure for AI contamination, bot-gamed NPS, and synthetic complaints, then rebuilds the listening architecture so the board can defend the data. - Digital-Only Trust Architecture. For neo-banks and digital-only firms without relationship managers. Maps the customer journey through the seven signals and designs trust-shaped interventions at the moments where the absence of a human hurts the customer most. - Targeted Support Trust Audit. Runs a pension or savings provider's first segment communication under the new Targeted Support regime through the seven signals. GBP 7,500. One week. Door opener to Intervention and Architecture. ## How to work with Sideways Most engagements start with a single conversation and develop in one of three ways. - Trust Signal Read. A focused diagnosis. We map where trust is leaking and hand back board-ready evidence of where the gap sits and what it is likely costing. Fixed fee, from GBP 5,000. - Trust Intervention. A defined four to six week engagement. We redesign the moments that matter most, hand back something measurable, and leave the organisation with the language, tools, and scorecards to keep building. Scoped and priced per engagement. - Trust Architecture. A retained relationship covering measurement, design, and the full seven-signal methodology, for organisations that want trustworthiness designed in from the start rather than retrofitted when something breaks. ## Why it matters commercially Trust shapes behaviour. Behaviour shapes loyalty. Loyalty shapes value. When experiences are clearer and fairer, customers stay longer. When friction reduces thoughtfully, cost to serve drops. When decisions feel proportionate, escalation falls and relationships strengthen. The commercial impact shows in reduced churn, stronger retention, lower remediation costs, greater regulatory resilience, and more durable lifetime value. ## Founders Daljit Singh. Creative leader across design, technology, and business. Founded Digit in 1996, sold to WPP in 2005. Co-founded Conran Singh with Sir Terence Conran. Led design strategy at Fjord Accenture. Co-founded ANNA Money, building it from scratch into a UK business finance platform with over 100,000 customers and approximately GBP 30 million in annual recurring revenue, before stepping back in January 2025. Most recently led brand and trust strategy at Exactly.ai. Awards include D&AD Black Pencil, two BAFTAs, FT Top 50 Creative Minds (twice), and a Cannes Cyber Lion. Founding advisory boards at the British Council and Design Council. Nicolas Roope. Designer and entrepreneur with over thirty years in digital innovation. Co-founder of Poke. Work recognised by Webby Awards, MoMA, and the V&A. Founder of Plumen. Stephen Barber. Experience strategist connecting brand, design, and behaviour. Senior roles at FutureBrand, Digitas LBi, Interbrand, and PwC. Led Mastercard's sensory brand. ## Extended network Tom Banks. Journalist and editor with over two decades covering design, creativity, and the industries around them. Former editor of Design Week, creative editor at The Drum. Dr Chanuki Illushka Seresinhe. Data scientist and AI researcher. Doctoral work at the University of Warwick and the Alan Turing Institute. Former data science lead at Zoopla, Channel 4, and Culture Trip. Co-founder of Beautifulplaces.ai. ## Past clients and brand experience Accenture, Audi, Etisalat, IBM, BAFTA, Kodak, Mastercard, Microsoft, WPP. ## Core pages - [Home](https://trustsideways.com/) — Sideways overview: trust as a metric not a message, the Seven Trust Signals framework, client work, and how the practice helps regulated businesses reduce churn, manage risk, and meet Consumer Duty obligations. - [Seven Trust Signals](https://trustsideways.com/seven-trust-signals) — Full reference for the proprietary diagnostic and generative framework: Clarity, Honesty, Reliability, Fairness, Care, Friction, and Consistency. Each signal explained with how it is measured and designed for. - [Consumer Duty](https://trustsideways.com/consumer-duty) — Behavioural trust design for FCA-regulated firms. Six entry points built on the seven trust signals: the Trust Signal Programme (training), Vulnerability Design, Disclosure Design, Listening Audit, Digital-Only Trust Architecture, and the Targeted Support Trust Audit. - [Daljit Singh](https://trustsideways.com/daljit-singh) — Founder profile. Background in digital design, fintech, and behavioural design; career timeline and the work behind trustworthiness as a measurable, designable outcome for regulated businesses. - [Call My Bluff](https://trustsideways.com/callmybluff) — Editorial-style invite to a private Sideways event for senior leaders in regulated industries. ## Thinking Essays and perspectives on trust, behavioural design, and regulated industries. - [Thinking index](https://trustsideways.com/thinking) — Repository of strategic essays from Sideways on trust, behavioural design, financial services, and Consumer Duty. - [Businesses don't want a bank](https://trustsideways.com/thinking/businesses-dont-want-a-bank) — On the small product decision behind ANNA's launch, and why a miaowing card became a behavioural lesson in how trust is actually built in regulated categories. - [Can a pixel be worth a diamond?](https://trustsideways.com/thinking/can-a-pixel-be-worth-a-diamond) — On whether digital interaction can carry accumulated meaning, and why this is the central question of organisational trustworthiness. - [Trust designers](https://trustsideways.com/thinking/trust-designers) — On the contraction of the creative industry, the commoditisation of design by AI, and the emergence of behavioural design as the discipline that fills the gap. - [The billion pound blind spot](https://trustsideways.com/thinking/the-billion-pound-blind-spot) — On the financial services acquisition obsession, retention economics, and the design choices that determine whether customers stay. - [AI is amplifying your worst behaviours](https://trustsideways.com/thinking/ai-is-amplifying-your-worst-behaviours) — On chatbot failure in regulated industries, Consumer Duty implications, and who should own the customer relationship. - [The aim to build more trust](https://trustsideways.com/thinking/the-aim-to-build-more-trust) — On why trust cannot be a goal, what it actually is, and what that means for the businesses trying to earn it. ## Contact Email: daljit@trustsideways.com or info@trustsideways.com Website: https://trustsideways.com Consumer Duty page: https://trustsideways.com/consumer-duty Sideways is the trading name of Trust Sideways Limited. Registered in England and Wales. Company No. 17026148.