Over £5.5m funding approved for 46  community finance organisations 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, and 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 specific projects which meet the Fund’s objectives but sit outside the core grants.

We’ve had a fantastic response and the fund was quickly oversubscribed, with 71 community finance organisations applying for funding totalling £15.3m. So far we have approved £5.5m funding for 46 community finance organisations. 

Overall, we expect to commit £9-10m by spring 2025. We have worked hard to get money deployed quickly – two thirds of grant recipients have received some or all of their grant funding (for large grants, we typically split grant payments into two tranches). 

Whilst a lot of the grant funding has been on things within businesses sharply hit by the cost of living challenges, notably unplanned costs around people and technology improvements the EOI proposals have been really interesting. The variety of ideas has seen everything from working on projects with Housing Associations, simple loan guarantee schemes and propositions targeting younger member savings and acquisition. 

We received applications from across England from organisations large and small, and grant funding is going to a good spread of locations. These include:

CLEVR Money

CLEVR Money is a credit union in Blackpool which predominantly includes some of the most deprived wards in England. We’ve committed £102,000 in grant funding to support increases in staffing costs and utility bills, as well as costs related to supporting specialist technology systems which will increase future efficiency and reduce costs.

Lending from Clevr Money plays an important role in providing access to affordable and responsible credit in the north west to people in financially vulnerable circumstances.

Clevr Money has seen that 87% of new loans issued are for amounts under £1,000, and the overwhelming majority being have a repayment term of under a year.

The credit union has seen 83% of these new loans issued to social housing tenants, building on their strong partnership with Blackpool Coastal Housing, while 67% were issued to single parents with children.

’With the support of the grant, our community credit union has transformed its workspace and upgraded our IT systems, significantly increasing our capacity to serve more people, more efficiently and created a more productive working environment for our staff.’

Jackie Colebourne, Chief Operating Officer at CLEVR Money

London Plus Credit Union

London Plus Credit Union provides affordable and responsible credit options across the boroughs of Hammersmith and Fulham, Kensington and Chelsea, Hounslow, Wandsworth, and Westminster. 88% of new loans issued were under £1,000 and 68% of the amount lent was for less than one year.

The majority of their loans are to women (86% of total loans), of which 70% are to borrowers who are lone parents with dependent children. 85% of London Plus credit union’s new loans were offered to borrowers who are social housing tenants. 

We’ve committed £42,700 through the Community Finance Resilience Fund to support the credit union to cover increases in operational costs, and to invest further in business infrastructure for future resilience. 

This includes covering energy costs, digital services and automation costs and website developments, including the replacement of their existing mobile app to improve their onboarding, loan application and bank transfer processes. 

As a result London Plus Credit Union is seeing growth in its loan book, building future resilience and increasing access to much needed affordable credit for people in financially vulnerable circumstances.

 ‘We are very happy to be working with Fair4All Finance supporting their objective to improve the resilience of the community finance sector. The grant we have received is helping us to deal with higher bills due to the cost-of-living crisis and to improve our services to our members.  

It is helping us to make our services easier to use, including a new mobile app and simplified loan application processes. We have also upgraded our main website, which is enhancing our ability to raise awareness of our services in our communities and attract new members.’

Vincent Thomas, Chair of London Plus Credit Union

At Fair4All Finance we know credit isn’t the right answer for everyone who’s in financially vulnerable circumstances. However, for many people access to a small, short term loan can help them meet unexpected costs, smooth incomes and start to build financial resilience.

‘Community finance providers like credit unions, CDFIs and other social lenders are a lifeline for many – even more so during recent economic shocks.

We’re glad to be getting dormant assets funding out to many of these providers to support them through the cost of living crisis, and to sustain and grow the provision of affordable credit to people in financially vulnerable circumstances.’

Holly Piper, Investment Director at Fair4All Finance

What’s next

Thank you for all your support and patience this year as we’ve been working at pace to review applications to the fund, and to release funding to those with successful applications. We’ve completed the majority of all funding requests, and aim to finalise the remaining ones in the spring.

We are appointing an independent evaluation partner early in the new year who will support us to understand and report on the impact of the Fund.