Fair4All Finance June activity update

28 June 2019

Call for expressions of interest: affordable credit providers scale up programme

The call for Expressions of Interest to participate in our initial pilot programme for capacity building and scale up of affordable credit is now open. The aim of the programme is to work with 4 or 5 CDFIs and credit unions to develop recommendations for building capacity and scale that will apply both to the organisations taking part and add to the evidence base for wider system changes.

We are seeking organisations of scale, focused on serving the most vulnerable, with leadership ambition and capacity to grow this area significantly. The approach will be an in-depth diagnostic working with leadership to consider all aspects of operations – from marketing to funding. We will consider organisations operating across the UK and they must have significant operations in England. More information here.

Funding

We’re in the process of exploring what the funding we offer the affordable credit sector could look like. This will be developed alongside the pilots mentioned above.

Good affordable credit provider

We’re developing a set of criteria to define what a ‘good’ affordable credit provider looks like. This will cover organisational set-up (mission and asset lock), customer focus, product, repayment and recovery, and gateway to other services. This will be used to inform the organisations selected in the pilot and potentially later as an industry kitemark. We are keen to discuss this with others in the sector, particularly anyone who has already developed ideas in this area and also explored the use of kite mark type systems – please get in touch if that’s you!

Data and credit scoring for vulnerable customers

We’ve been commissioned by the HMT Financial Inclusion Policy Forum to lead a sub-group to explore how data currently works for vulnerable customers and will give recommendations to government and industry at the next policy forum meeting in October.

Expanding the Board

We’re delighted that our two initial board members, Sir Leigh Lewis and Joanna Elson OBE, are now in place. Sir Leigh Lewis was formerly Permanent Secretary of DWP and has deep experience in government and the social sector. Joanna Elson OBE is CEO of Money Advice Trust and has a wealth of experience in financial capability and inclusion through this role and others such as the board of UK Finance. More details about their appointments can be found here.

The search for our next two board members is now also underway, details of these positions and the person specifications are now live on our website here.

Expanding the staff team

Our CEO job advertisement closed on 17th June receiving 64 applications. This has been longlisted to 8 very strong candidates. We expect to make an appointment before the end of July.

We have appointed two new full-time team members to work in the policy and strategy function. Their roles are:

Social Researcher and Advisor to lead on research and impact measurement, particularly to ensure that the needs of our target cohort are embedded across all programmes, and;
Policy and Strategy Advisor to support across our work on programme development, delivery and stakeholder engagement.

Both of these recruits come from the social sector and came from a public advertisement. We look forward to them joining the team and will add their bios to our website as soon as they are in position.

That’s all for now. If you have any questions or want to get in touch please email the team – Hello@fair4allfinance.org.uk