Looking back at her first 6 weeks as CEO of Fair4All Finance, Kate Pender reflects on six of her personal highlights:
‘Enjoy it!’
‘Tackle things quickly – I’ve only regretted being cautious’
‘You’ll want to spend lots of time listening and it’ll be worthwhile’
‘It can be quite a lonely role being a CEO – build a support network around you’
‘I learned a lot from other people who’d recently become CEOs too – find your peers’
‘You won’t get it right all the time, get really good of letting go of the things you wanted to work out differently’
‘The internal candidates never get the gig – well done you!’
‘Make sure you write up the first few weeks so you remember all the things you did!’
There is a plethora of advice for new CEOs, as I’ve discovered.
Much of it told with powerful anecdote, some of them side splittingly hilarious, others quite poignant.
But the last point in particular struck me. Write it up! So, what have the first six weeks delivered? What have I to reflect on? Six things I’m thinking on today as that sixth week finishes…..
It’s been busy, for me and for our wonderful team. In a good and exciting way. And it’s certainly convinced me all the more, that delivering financial inclusion requires real collaboration across community finance, government, regulators, banking, impact investors, commercial funders and lenders, and services which help people improve their resilience like debt advice, income maximisation, savings and insurance.
It takes a village, as they say. My six highlights reflect that:
Our Strategic Planning and Change Leadership programme
Our work with community finance has continued with the second cohort of our Strategic Planning and Change leadership programme kicking off their journey together in Cambridge. One of the last cohort participants described this work as one of Fair4All’s best investments of all so I’m excited to see what this new cohort of talented Credit Union and Community Development Finance Institution leaders make of it.
Making the case for financial inclusion at the Labour Party Conference
Financial Inclusion was woven into Labour Party conference in panel sessions on Financial Inclusion like the one our former Deputy CEO Sarah Poretta titled ‘A new strategy for tackling financial exclusion: How a Labour government could support low-income consumers’, and the one I spoke at which looked at how access financial services can drive inclusive growth across the country, and in every other forum that Financial Inclusion could foreseeably be raised. Motor vehicle insurance came up a lot, as did affordable credit, access to banking hubs and the role of the banking sector.
It was really good to hear Minister Tulip Siddiq speak about her own insights on the need for a National Financial Inclusion Strategy and also to meet her following on from conference. On a personal note, it’s also lovely to meet a Minister who’s roughly the same height as me! I also met Minister Stephanie Peacock, the Minister for Civil Society with my colleagues from our Dormant Asset sister organisations and she also spoke at a Civil Society reception at Downing Street.
We believe in lived experience to shape what we advocate for on financial experience and it’s really refreshing to hear Ministers speak about their first hand insight from the work in supporting family and constituents on financial exclusion challenges.
Engagement with the banking sector
I’ve also spent time with the banking sector, speaking on a panel at Lloyds Inclusive for Customers Event. It’s always a good sign that Financial Inclusion is being taken seriously when over 110 senior bankers from across the group assemble to hear about what they can do and I look forward to seeing the actions that came from a thought provoking afternoon.
Speaking at the Finance and Leasing Association’s Affordable Credit Symposium
For the second year in a row I spoke at the Finance and Leasing Association’s Symposium on Affordable Credit alongside Andy Sleigh, COO of Clearscore, and we were joined by Chris Pond, Chair, Financial Inclusion Commission and Ian McLaughlin, CEO of Vanquis Banking Group.
I reflected on my two least favourite big numbers. 20.3 m people underserved or excluded. £2bn of commercially viable compliant lending not being offered at present. What a missed opportunity!
Even if it pains me as a kiwi to credit the No Interest Loan scheme we’ve recently piloted as having its origins in Australia, it has helped people through a crisis and reconnected many to mainstream credit. Through our fantastic network of lenders we’ve provided £10m to 14,000 people with roughly half of those who’ve repaid their loan in full being eligible for a normal commercial loan. Salad, NE First, Capital, South Manchester, Plend, Robert Owen, Leeds Credit Union, Fair for You and getting this off the ground itself was a huge collaborative effort with Toynbee Hall, Sian Williams, Fair by Design, Martin Coppack, Maria Booker; HMT, and JP Morgan.
Currently I’m fascinated with a US example – the Small Dollar Loans scheme where regulatory clarity has enabled 6 of the largest banks to lend in large volume tiny sums of credit with Bank of America and Wells Fargo alone lending $500m to excluded people at less than $1000 a time. I also mentioned some of the rapidly scaled alternatives already trialled in the UK like the 27m people who had a 3 month interest free overdraft through their bank during covid.
Consumer Credit Trade Association (CCCTA) Conference
Access to Credit was a key question at the CCTA conference in Manchester where I was on a panel along with Martha Stokes from the FCA and Chris Pond. It was great to hear Martha echoing the points made last month by FCA CEO Nikhil Rathi in his speech at Step Change annual conference ‘if we want a step change in financial inclusion, we will need to adapt too. That will require a willingness to take more risk and to experiment, accepting that not every idea will work and a determination from everyone with a part to play to improve outcomes ‘.
Visiting South Manchester Credit Union
Also in Manchester, this month were several of our board members – who went to see South Manchester Credit Union and the incredible work of Sheenagh Young – their CEO. Not only was Sheenagh the first ever NILS lender – courageous and confident enough to try something different, she’s been instrumental in getting the SoundPound collaboration underway in Manchester which now covers all Manchester Credit Unions offering one common front door to customers in need and has gone from strength to strength recently extending their offering through a partnership with Transport for Greater Manchester.
We’re really pleased to be helping this important collective collaborate. Bravo Sheenagh and thanks to our dedicated board members for going to see this first hand.
