A few weeks ago, the Thrive team had the pleasure of attending the Building Societies Annual Conference 2025, where we joined leaders from across the sector to explore the future of finance, governance, and compliance. A consistent theme that emerged was the need for learning experiences that are both secure and engaging – especially in a sector where trust is everything.

With over £525 billion in total assets, 26 million customers served, and 52,000+ staff employed by Building Societies Association (BSA) members, the stakes for getting workplace learning right couldn’t be higher. Learning platforms can’t afford to be one-size-fits-all; they need to reflect the complexity, compliance needs and customer-facing culture of today’s financial services sector.

So whether you’re updating a legacy LMS or launching digital learning for the first time, here are four things L&D teams in financial services and building societies should be looking for.

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1. Built-in compliance without the burnout

Compliance is typically (and unfortunately) thought of as a slightly yawn-inducing topic – but for financial services, it’s a non-negotiable aspect of workplace learning that should be baked into every single employee’s onboarding journey. That’s why it’s so important that your LMS is set up to make it as engaging and effortless as possible. 

Tip! For more insights on transforming compliance training, take a look at our previous blogs Doing the impossible: How to make compliance training fun, Compliance training: Safeguarding your company in today's world, and The role of joy in learning design. 

The right LMS should:

• Offer analytics and reporting that can display your learning data all in one place, allowing you to track who’s completed their compliance training and who hasn’t. (More on that later!)
  
  
• Provide tailored learning paths to make learning personalised and targeted to each individual, department, or location. Thrive lets you create modules that align with your requirements, whether for onboarding, ongoing development or educating your team on new legislation.
  
  
• Deliver refresher reminders and re-certification paths: To save the hassle of chasing up every team member, your LMS should easily deliver essential learning courses and automate reminders to let your teams know what needs to be completed, and what might be overdue.
  
  
• Reward compliance with certificates: Providing certificates might seem like a relatively small deal to some, but it’s actually inextricably linked to a sense of motivation for learners. This study found that when certification is removed from elearning, completion rates are almost halved. Halved. That’s a very large percentage of your workforce that are ending up non-compliant or never even looking at the course in the first place.
  
  With Thrive’s certification feature, everyone can keep on top of their assigned learning - from managers through to end users. Learners can export their certification statement as a PDF, which will show what they’re compliant in and the date they completed it. Nicely tying up the entire learning experience, certificates provide a final sense of completion for learners.

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Thrive’s compliance capabilities are built to keep regulators happy without exhausting your learners — making mandatory training smoother, smarter and far more engaging.

Just take it from Thrive customer Middlesbrough College. They were searching for a new digital learning solution that would get new staff up to speed fast, deliver engaging compliance training that worked, and support continued professional development. Together with Thrive, they overhauled their existing process and replaced it with engaging learning pathways -- resulting in 100% completion of compliance courses.

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2. Personalisation that matches pace and purpose

Personalisation is at the core of effective learning. No two learners are the same – whether that relates to the way they learn, what they need to learn about, or when they can fit learning in – and the same goes for financial services employees.

From frontline branch teams, to mortgage advisors, to remote leaders, everyone is unique with different needs – and your LMS should reflect that.

A sector-ready LMS should:

• Help employees achieve their individual, professional goals. Each employee has their own goals they want to achieve at work, and your LMS can help them to that by delivering tailored learning recommendations. Thrive’s hyper-personalised platform allows them to select from a predefined list, or add their own.
  
  
• Allow admins to create audience-specific campaigns and pathways so that everyone receives the learning that is most relevant to them. Thrive helps to encourage a self-directed learning culture by recommending the most relevant content to your users based on what it is they want to learn.
  
  
• Personalised search and AI: Thrive’s search functionality helps users find content and answers on the platform easily and that is also relevant to them. Users can also refine these results by using the filters available such as content type, Tags and association. Thrive’s AI Assistant, Kiki, can also support providing answers and suggesting content based on natural language search queries.

With Thrive’s highly personalised learning, your learners don’t get lost in an endless catalogue. They get relevant, timely learning that helps them grow and perform. Thrive customer Lendinvest saw a huge boost to their learning culture thanks to Thrive’s highly-personalised functionality, resulting in a 98% increase in content completions and a 66% boost in user engagement.

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3. Security and scalability for peace of mind

Perhaps the most important aspect of an LMS for the financial services sector: Security.

The financial services sector is tasked with handling sensitive financial information, and a culture of data security and platform resilience are paramount to keeping it safe.

When choosing an LMS, financial services firms should ensure:

• Compliance with ISO 27001, GDPR, and other data standards. Thrive’s enterprise-grade security framework is designed to meet the highest industry standards, backed by our ISO27001 certification.
  
  
• Enterprise-level scalability to support thousands of learners across branches. The right LMS should scale as your business does – not crumble under the pressure.
  
  
• Flexible permissions for managing visibility and access across departments.

At Thrive, security and scalability aren’t an afterthought; they’re foundational. That’s why we’re trusted by global organisations with rigorous data demands.

Just take it from our customer Leeds Building Society, with 50 branches across the country and 2,000+ people in its workforce. The member-owned brand knows a thing or two about the importance of security, and trusted Thrive with all its workplace learning.

Through this partnership, the engagement levels have gone from practically non-existent to above and beyond what the Leeds Building Society team could’ve anticipated: Within just the first week, 44% of colleagues had accessed Thrive and started to build a skills profile – and this jumped up to 85% within the month, with 400 goals added.

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4. Insights that link learning to business goals

It’s no longer enough to report on completions. L&D leaders in financial services need data that links learning to outcomes like customer satisfaction, compliance rates or speed to competence. A high-performing LMS should:

• Offer real-time analytics dashboards. It’s 2025, why are you still chasing spreadsheets and scattered reports? Thrive Analyse delivers real-time learning data and learner insights in one easy-to-use dashboard. Instantly see user activity, track training engagement, and access visual analytics that help you make smarter L&D decisions — all from one central hub.
  
  
• Track learner behaviour and skill development. Stay ahead of the curve with detailed trends and activity analysis. Thrive Analyse shows you exactly which training materials and tags are being used, when, and by whom – helping you drive learning impact across your organisation.
  
  
• Allow integration with HR systems and performance tools. The right LMS should slot right into your workflow, not act as a clunky add-on that doesn’t quite fit right. ThriveLink is our new powerful connector that integrates Thrive with hundreds of third-party systems and software. It will simplify the integration process and custom work required to connect your learning platform to the rest of your ecosystem.
  
  

Thrive’s analytics tools give you the clarity and context to prove impact — and evolve your learning strategy with confidence.

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A rapidly-evolving sector with ever-changing needs

As we saw first-hand at The Building Societies Conference 2025, the financial services sector is evolving rapidly – from the rise of AI and ESG expectations to the demand for more personalised, human-centred customer experiences. 

In order for building societies to thrive (pun intended!), they need an LMS that’s not only built for learning, but also built for the world: Compliant, scalable, engaging, and laser-focused on business goals. 

At Thrive, we’re so proud to support organisations across the sector with a platform that delivers just that: Helping L&D teams empower their people and protect their customers. 

Curious to learn how we can support you? Book a demo today. 

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