Fair4All Finance and Fair Finance agree £3.3m social investment deal to tackle financial exclusion across the UK

• Award winning social business Fair Finance provides affordable credit, advice and support to some of the most financially excluded in the UK
• £3.3m will support Fair Finance’s digital transformation and increase the number of people it can serve
• Social investment is part of Fair4All Finance’s Affordable Credit Scale Up Programme, designed to increase the supply of affordable credit for people in vulnerable circumstances

Fair4All Finance and Fair Finance have agreed a package of social investment to increase the supply of affordable credit across the UK and help tackle financial exclusion.

Fair4All Finance will invest £3.3m in Fair Finance, an award winning social business tackling financial exclusion, in the form of equity, debt and a grant. 

The funding will support Fair Finance’s journey towards becoming a more tech enabled business, while also allowing it to scale significantly to become a leading provider of affordable credit and a realistic alternative to high cost finance. 

It will also allow Fair Finance to develop and expand a wider range of services to improve financial resilience amongst low income communities across the country. 

Faisel Rahman, CEO of Fair Finance said: 

‘This investment in technology and infrastructure is hugely important in helping Fair Finance become a scalable and accessible service to many hundreds of thousands of financially excluded people across the country. Coming at a time of a cost of living crisis, and when we learn that nearly a million people are using loans sharks, it makes the need for our services both timely and more important than ever before.’

The funding is structured using Fair Finance’s Transferable Shares model, a social investment equity instrument that offers investors a social and financial return on their investment while protecting the business’ mission. In addition, the funding package is designed to allow existing banking relationships with Shawbrook and UniCredit to be leveraged. 

The investment is the latest support from Fair4All Finance’s Affordable Credit Scale Up Programme, which has now committed over £28m to community finance providers to increase the supply of affordable credit to people in vulnerable circumstances.

Holly Piper, Investment Director at Fair4All Finance said: 

‘We’re really excited to be investing in Fair Finance. They have a solid track record of responsible lending to people in vulnerable circumstances, with strong customer service and excellent wraparound support. Fair Finance reach particularly under-served communities, with half of their customers born outside the UK, 58% from black or minority ethnic communities and four in five living in areas of higher deprivation. Our funding will support their ongoing tech transformation and allow them to scale to reach more people across the country.’

Law firm Dentons have provided pro bono advice and counsel to Fair Finance throughout the transaction. 

Fair Finance’s vision is to revolutionise financial services to make them more inclusive. Its model has brought together social and commercial funding to address the issue of exclusion, and the organisation has already helped nearly 100,000 people over the last two decades. This investment will allow it to deliver its mission at scale and sustainably to many more.