Elaine established the Personal Finance Research Centre at the University of Bristol in 1998. She is an internationally-acknowledged expert on personal financial services policy and research, particularly in the areas of financial capability, financial inclusion, over-indebtedness and consumer protection. Much of her recent work has been at an international level and focuses on the drivers of financial wellbeing. This brings together all her previous research into a single conceptual framework and looks at the inter-relationships between behaviours such as spending, borrowing, saving and money management and knowledge, skills, experience, attitudes to money, personality traits and the financial environment.

She has been a consultant with World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the OECD and a member of the European Commission Expert Group on Financial Education. She is a non-executive director of the Money and Pensions Serivce. In 2007, she was awarded a CBE for services to the financial services industry.