Supporting community finance providers through the pandemic
We launched our Covid-19 Resilience Fund in April 2020, within a month of the first lockdown hitting. It was designed at speed in consultation with key stakeholders to help identify the risks of the pandemic to community finance providers and people in vulnerable circumstances.
The Fund provided £3.9m to 31 community finance organisations, who collectively lent over £138m in the last year before Covid-19 and serve 136,000 customers.
- Our grants helped preserve c50% of lending capacity targeted at people in vulnerable circumstances
- From April 2020 to April 2021 cumulative surpluses for grant recipients were £1.5m. Without the Fund cumulative losses would have been £2.3m over the same period
- Several indicators show that lending to customers in vulnerable circumstances recovered swiftly after an initial shock and that this lending has since been sustained
Our summary report captures what went well, what we learned and how grantees used the funding to make an impact. We think it really shines a light on the tremendous work community finance providers are doing to help people in vulnerable circumstances.
