Complete our 2024 Community Finance Technology Survey

As part of our commitment to increasing the availability of affordable credit for people in financially vulnerable circumstances, we’re always keen to work with community finance providers to support the growth of the sector.

We’re currently seeking the input of the community finance sector to gather insights on current technology use across credit unions and CDFIs. We welcome responses by Friday 5 July 2024.

In our 15 minute survey, we’re aiming to get a better understanding of technology use across the community finance sector – similar to the survey we shared back in 2020.

This time we have an additional focus on the use of Community Finance Service Organisations and shared service organisations within the sector.

A breakdown of the results will be shared with all organisations that take part, meaning you can see where your organisation sits within your peer group.

Why are you asking?

We want to better understand how technology is being used, and how Community Finance Service Organisations are being implemented across the sector.

Community Finance Service Organisations (more commonly known by credit unions as CUSOs) are widely used and can vary in what they do. They can be as simple as a Software as a Service (SaaS) delivery organisation, or as complex as a complete Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) organisation which supports the entire business.

This can take the shape of technology consulting, collections and recoveries, lending administration and support, savings administration and support, audit and compliance consulting, HR shared services and member support technology and services – among others.

What will you do with the data?

We’ll feed the insights from this survey into a report which will outline the current state of play in the community finance sector and explore how services that benefit members and customers can be optimised.

The information gathered as part of this survey will help shape our policy and funding decisions going forward.

We will also be sharing findings from the survey with the sector, and organisations that respond will receive an illustrative view of how your organisation’s responses contrast with your peer group.

What did we learn in 2020?

• 93% of respondents said they expect they’ll need to substantially increase their technology in the next five years – in many cases to survive
• 37% of lenders were undertaking or planning significant technology change, with many looking at replacing their core technology
• Funding was by far the main perceived barrier to the sector optimising its use of technology, with insufficient capability and inappropriate products from suppliers behind in second and third place
• 70% of providers used open banking for affordability and credit risk checks
• 43% or providers were collaborating with others, while 26% weren’t currently but would like to 
• 62% of providers with IT people in their team were either planning or during significant technology enabled change
• 78% of providers who didn’t have an IT person reported they were planning only incremental changes to their technology