The UK’s digital economy stands at a critical tipping point.

Consumer trust – the “demand side” of the market – is weakening just as the pace of technological innovation accelerates. And without decisive action from government and industry, the equilibrium needed for markets to function risks sliding out of reach.

This was the sobering message given to a packed keynote theatre at DIGIT Expo 2025, as Dr Mahlet (Milly) Zimeta, head of digital & data policy at consumer group Which? grounded her talk – Building Consumer Trust in a Data Driven Future on a simple premise: businesses and consumers “want the same thing”. 

Essentially, both sides rely on markets delivering safe products, transparent services, and meaningful accountability – but something’s currently getting lost in that piece. 

The rapid expansion of digital products and data-driven systems – from smart devices to AI – is creating new frictions, new risks, and is inherently leaving people behind.

Her talk, which we’ll go through in detail below, elucidates on the fragile balance between innovation, consumer trust, and effective governance – all while trying to keep people safe when they spend their money online (or do anything online, for that matter), which is proving an ever-more onerous task.

Why consumer trust underpins innovation

Zimeta opened by framing industry and consumers as fundamentally aligned rather than adversarial, as it may be easy to presume.

Referring to her own career across TechUK, the Royal Society and Which?, she said it was useful to think of “the demand side and the supply side” reaching equilibrium – the point at which markets function sustainably.

“I like to think that we want the same thing,” she said. “We want to find that equilibrium where supply and demand are paired and sustainable, where the market’s providing what demand wants.”

But in the digital economy, she warned, consumer trust becomes disproportionately important. A failure in one part of the sector – an unsafe product, a high-profile breach, a harmful algorithmic decision – doesn’t stay neatly contained and the effects of these failures can leave indelible stains.

“Consumers don’t think in terms of sectors or only in terms of brands… They’re just going to think, that was bad. I’m not trying again.”

Maintaining trust, she argued, is foundational to economic growth: “If customers trust your product, then they’re going to want more of it and they’re going to be interested in innovation around that area.”

Which? conceptualises consumer experience in three stages: pre-transaction, transaction, and post-transaction. Zimeta used this model to underline how digital systems introduce new categories of potential harm = psychological, financial, time-based and, increasingly, physical.

At the pre-transaction stage, she highlighted harms caused by poor guidance, opaque information, or exclusion from digital services. This, she said, results in “time wasting and psychological harm, anxiety, stress, frustration.”

In the transaction stage, failures around pricing or transparency create financial exploitation. After a purchase, problems can escalate further: unsafe products, inaccessible support, or inadequate redress mechanisms.

“In the digital economy, we’re not always seeing accessible redress”, she warned.

“It can be really, really difficult to get hold of a company to sort out any problems.”

The risks, she stressed, cut across sectors: finance, entertainment, communications, and everyday consumer tech.

Which? Research reveals what consumers fear most

Dr Zimeta highlighted Which? research that identifies three major digital use cases where public anxiety is rising – but not in the order many might expect.

In what will be a shock to many (especially our readers), AI – or at least, AI in its current guise – is only the third-highest area of consumer concern, according to Dr Zimeta. While awareness is extremely high, literacy is comparatively low for the nascent technology.

“Only maybe low 20s (percentile)… have the literacy to navigate it,” she said, calling this “a huge risk” for consumer empowerment.

Which?’s monthly consumer tracker shows AI has “come straight in at the third highest non-financial worry”, with around 65% of consumers concerned about “how businesses use AI in ways that affect them”.

More concerning still is the second-ranking category: product security in smart devices.

“Why on earth does your washing machine need to know your date of birth or your gender?” she asked, highlighting Which? testing that found fewer than half of devices meet its recommended privacy standards.

And the biggest concern of all? Data security.

“The security of the data that I share… is literally the thing that consumers are most concerned about in our tracker,” she said. “It’s higher than fear of scams. It’s higher than the state of my high street. It’s higher than the UK economy after Brexit.”

For Zimeta, the most striking finding is that consumer attitudes show “surprise that there isn’t more regulation” and a drift into what Which? calls “rational disengagement” – where people know they have rights but don’t believe enforcement is worth the effort.

“It’s almost like learned helplessness,” she laments.

Smart data’s potential versus public distrust

Zimeta pointed to the Data Use and Access Act as a major shift enabling “smart data” — consumer-authorised data transfers between organisations. The potential for competition, consumer choice and innovation is substantial.

But the trust gap poses a threat to adoption.

“If they don’t trust data sharing, they won’t trust it in any context,” she said, adding that consumers could be “quite pragmatic” if they saw clear personal benefit.

The problem, she argued, is that many businesses still treat data primarily as a proprietary asset rather than a shared resource that could reduce harms, especially around fraud. She referenced Which?’s finding that 75% of fraud victims want their data shared across sectors to prevent repeat attacks, and 61% expect it — yet actual sharing remains “very, very, very low”.

Businesses, she said, are often held back by “fear of the asymmetric benefits” — that another organisation might benefit more from shared data than they do by keeping it.

“That’s actually quite striking… whose interests are we acting in there?”

Customer service: the overlooked competitive advantage

Some harms, she argued, require no advanced technology to fix — only human-centred investment. Customer service, in particular, is causing “massive harm”.

In the energy sector alone, Which? estimated that poor customer service in 2024 led to, according to Dr Zimeta:

• “About 1,600 years” of wasted consumer time
  
• “8.9 million” people are experiencing psychological harm
  
• “1.2 million customers… £166 million worse off just giving up”
  
• A total estimated detriment of “about £203 million”
  

Unsurprisingly, trust levels also aren’t great: “The energy sector is the third lowest,” said Dr Zimeta, with only around 6% of consumers expressing trust.

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The broadband sector shows similar patterns: “1,500 years” of wasted time, “9.2 million” instances of psychological harm, and £94 million in consumer detriment.

Philosophy, resilience, and the long-term view

Zimeta closed with Aristotle and Nietzsche.

Dr Zimeta drew together two recurring Aristotelian ideas that volatility and uncertainty are not new – each generation feels them as uniquely destabilising, paraphrasing by saying that “each new solution will create new problems – that’s just the human condition.” For each generation, disruptive change will feel volatile, complex and ambiguous isn’t inherently a bad thing – it’s about how we navigate it.

Nietzsche’s perspective – perhaps unsurprisingly – is more bracing, with Dr Zimeta drawing inspiration from the famously cheerful and breezy Twilight of the Idols and Zarathustra, paraphrasing: “the salvation lies in the struggle”. 

In Zimeta’s framing, this means accepting that the digital economy cannot be “fixed once”, but requires continual effort, adaptability and resilience.

The real question, she concluded, is what future consumers – including the people in the room – will wish the industry had done today.

“What would future you, in 20 years’ time, want present you to have done now in order to create that better future?”