Our October Community Finance Bulletin
Welcome to the latest edition of our Community Finance Bulletin – and the penultimate one of 2024.
In this edition we look ahead to the end of the year, in a time period that we know is extremely busy for credit unions and CDFIs. Our newly appointed CEO, Kate Pender, outlines our strategic priorities as well as looking at what the new Labour Government might mean for wider financial inclusion.
There are updates on our £5m+ Community Finance Resilience Fund, our No Interest Loan Scheme Pilot and the impact this is having on borrowers, and initiatives like our Leadership Programme. As you read through this bulletin you’ll see there are a few opportunities for you to input and share your views – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
‘I’m excited to be writing to you as the new CEO of Fair4All Finance. Sacha leaves a fantastic legacy and I’m looking forward to building on what we’ve achieved with you and our other stakeholders so far.
Our focus and mission remain the same – to boost financial inclusion across the country by increasing access to fair and affordable financial products and services. Our strategy spans increasing affordable credit, working with mainstream banks and financial services providers, and supporting changes in the market to deliver products that meet the needs of all customers.
Community finance organisations play an important part in our mission, and we value the support we get from you; whether that’s delivering programmes like the No Interest Loan Scheme (NILS) or consolidation lending pilots, embedding benefit calculators and grant checkers into your customer journeys, or making time and space to engage with our research, good practice support guides, training and awareness raising work.
Fair4All Finance was first set up in 2019. We are a limited life organisation, which means we don’t intend to be here forever. We exist to improve the financial services system and to make it fairer for everyone – to help the millions of people living with the daily realities of financial exclusion.
As our organisation enters a new phase of its life, we will be turning our attention to additional areas of our remit beyond credit – into how better to build the resilience of individuals through the right insurance and savings products, tackling problem debt and improving customer experiences.
Most importantly we are focusing on effecting lasting change across the system. To that end we are delighted at the new Government’s commitment to a National Financial Inclusion Strategy.
We also see great potential in strategic change opportunities in the community finance sector. We welcome ABCUL’s call for credit union merger support, common bond changes and CUSO support. And we’re really pleased to see the collaborations that have arisen between multiple credit unions in Manchester through the SoundPound consortium and in Liverpool where collaboration on referrals from a mainstream bank is delivering great results.
I’m just back from the Labour party conference and it was fantastic to hear how many times financial inclusion came up, especially regarding the Fair Banking Act, and on a hot research topic for us – the other US exemplar the Small Dollar Loans Scheme. These examples, along with considering extending significant guarantee schemes, have huge potential for the financial services sector.
Our work has shown quite how dramatically access to credit has dried up, with more than 3 million people thought to have borrowed from unregulated or illegal lenders over the last three years. This should be a call to arms for all of us and we believe the entire financial services sector has a role to play to address this gap, across the entire range of products.
Collaboration is key to all of our work. I look forward to continuing to work with you and other organisations committed to building financial inclusion, working with partners to deliver change at scale and keep making a difference to the lives of millions of people.
Thanks again for your continued support.’
Funding going out from our Community Finance Resilience Fund
Heading towards £1m disbursed to community finance providers so far, with more to follow over the coming months.
We’ve been working hard to get funding from our Community Finance Resilience Fund out to community finance providers, so they can sustain and grow the provision of affordable credit for people in financially vulnerable circumstances.
The £5m+ fund was launched at the end of last year in recognition of the cost of living challenges for community finance providers and their borrowers, to help the community finance sector to grow and help more people. It’s designed to:
- Improve the resilience of the community finance sector
- Preserve and scale affordable credit provision in England
Support from the fund includes small and large grants, subordinated debt to support capital adequacy and expressions of interest for any other funding that supports the funds objectives.
So far, we have reviewed around 90% of grants, with first funding going out of the door at the end of July. We continue to finalise grants and expect payments to be going out on a weekly basis.
Raising awareness of credit unions and CDFIs
A big thank you to everyone who took part in our messaging workshops. We’ve had some great feedback and input from across the sector on the most compelling messages to help consumers understand how the products and services offered by credit unions and CDFIs can benefit them.
Our partners, Instinctif, are now in the final stages of producing a messaging framework and guide which organisations can refer to and use to help support consumer awareness raising efforts.
Please take five minutes to have your say by completing this short six-question survey, to build on what we’ve learned in our workshops so far. All answers will be anonymous, unless you prefer otherwise.
Share your views via our short consumer messaging survey here
Have you used our Good Practice Lending Guide?
This summer saw the launch of our Good Practice Lending Guide, and you can find out a bit more about it on this recorded webinar. And that’s just the beginning! We’re planning to provide you with more support on the Guide —think blogs, webinars, video explainers, and in-depth explorations of the different modules.
We want your voice to shape the next steps, so tell us which of the following topics you’d like us to focus on next. Cast your vote below and help us steer our content in the direction that interests you the most.
You can access the full Good Practice Learning Guide here.
Our Leadership Programmes
We’re looking forward to welcoming a new cohort onto our Leadership Programme this October at the University of Cambridge. 23 senior leaders, CEOs and Board members from across the community finance sector will deepen their understanding of key strategic concepts, alongside practical application within their organisation with plenty of opportunities for networking and collaboration.
This programme follows on from the success of our pilot last year – you can read more about the Leadership Programme Pilot on our website. We can’t wait to get started!
An update on the No Interest Loan Scheme Pilot
We were pleased to see the No Interest Loan Scheme (NILS) pilot hit the £10m milestone in the provision of affordable credit to people in financially vulnerable circumstances – this means that £10m of new credit has been made available and is being lent to those who need it most.
You can read more about the NILS pilot on our website, including the findings from the independent interim impact evaluation.
Understanding the support needs of survivors of economic abuse – can you help?
We’re keen to hear from organisations which are supporting survivors of economic abuse. We want to understand what initiatives have worked well and where there have been barriers to providing the best outcome. Your input will be vital in helping us shape our strategic priorities for the next year.
If you have experience in this area to please contact Julieta Pasijoff Julieta.Pasijoff@fair4allfinance.org.uk who can set up a meeting.
Heads up – we’ve been working on a new website that will make it easier for our key stakeholders to find important information on the work we’re doing and opportunities to work with us. We’re looking to launch this in the next few weeks.
In the news
- Congratulations to Moneyline for being shortlisted for the Social Impact – Prove It award, and Great Western Credit Union for being shortlisted for the Social Investment Deal of the Year award – both at the Social Enterprise Awards.
- Credit unions make a huge difference to the financial resilience of their members. We highlighted this in our UK Savings Week blog titled ‘Building financial resilience through saving’
- Thanks to Sian Williams, CEO Switchback, for sharing her thoughts on the NILS pilot in a blog available on our website
- Here’s a recent video from Niall Alexander, our Credit and Consumer Markets Lead explaining how access to credit has changed, and why the shape of the credit market is just as important as its size
- A prominent writeup by Sally Hickey appearing online and as the first item within that weekend’s print edition of FT Money. The story highlighted how nearly three million people have fallen into financial difficulty last year, with more than 20 million people in Britain now living in financially vulnerable circumstances. It also welcomed the Government’s pledge to establish a financial inclusion strategy.
- The Big Issue highlighted a case study from Just Credit Union about how the credit union helped a mum-of-three escape from a violent relationship by providing financial help.
If your organisation is interested in taking part in our awareness raising campaign or would like help in highlighting your own news to consumer media, please contact our press office via fair4allfinance@instinctif.com
Share your feedback
It’s important to us that you get the most you can out of this update, and we’d love to hear your thoughts on the content. Did you like the length? Have we got the right level of detail? What else would you like to know about? What else can we include to make this update useful to you? Let us know any thoughts you have at vince@fair4allfinance.org.uk