Fair4All Finance publishes Annual Report and Accounts for 2023

We’re pleased to publish our Annual Report and Accounts for the year ending 31 December 2023.

We made great progress in ever changing market and economic conditions

Against this backdrop, we made significant progress in 2023 both on testing and scaling what works, and in building relationships with financial institutions to either serve this customer group themselves or co-invest with us.

Securing extra dormant assets funding was crucial to this and, faced with the increasing cost of living crisis, we quickly launched our Community Finance Resilience Fund and also got large providers onboard to expand the No Interest Loan Scheme (NILS) and consolidation loan scheme pilots.

Through these programmes we are also supporting the resilience of providers already serving people in financially vulnerable circumstances well, to help them thrive. And we’re working with large providers to test and prove how they can develop new products, services and technology that give people vital stepping stones to financial resilience.

Highlights include

Securing an extra £45m funding from the dormant assets scheme

• To support people in financially vulnerable circumstances with the rising cost of living. Government also confirmed financial inclusion will remain a named cause of the expanded scheme

Increasing provision of affordable credit

• Our first five Scale Up investees lent £65m in 2023 across 155,000 loans – up 26% from 2022. And we made new investment commitments to four major credit unions

Launching a £5m+ Community Finance Resilience Fund

• To support the resilience of credit unions and community development finance institutions (CDFIs) and preserve £40m of affordable credit

Committing £30m to expand No Interest and Consolidation Loan Scheme pilots

• To provide vital stepping stones to financial resilience by supporting tens of thousands of people in financially vulnerable circumstances to access lending over the next four years

Developing a shared Financial Inclusion Plan

• A plan to boost inclusion across financial services, implemented by a cross sector action group

Driving industry action with research insights

• Our illegal moneylending research and ‘Levelling the playing field’ report provided insight and impetus to cross industry action groups focused on increasing affordable credit provision and improving outcomes for people from minority ethnic groups

The power of working together

All our work is in collaboration with others and we’re grateful for the generosity and insight of each of our stakeholders.

As we embark on the next phase of our work, we’re clear that we cannot change the financial system on our own. We know it will take the combined skills of the whole industry, government and regulators. Our role is as a catalyst and we look forward to continuing to work with all our partners in the fight against financial exclusion.

Together we can keep making a difference to the lives of millions of people.