Community Finance Blog Week: Making markets work for the many

13^th April 2015

In the run up to the General Election, no issue is more pertinent than personal debt. With 8.8 million people over-indebted and little prospect of a significant ease in balancing household budgets, innovative and sustainable solutions are urgently needed to enable people to access affordable credit, build savings and ensure that our financial system works for the whole of society.

That’s why ResPublica is proud to support the Citizens UK Just Money campaign and the proposal for a Community Finance Foundation. To explore the benefits of community finance and discuss why a Community Finance Foundation would make a difference, ResPublica is delighted to welcome the following contributors to the Disraeli Room and bring this issue to the forefront of the election campaign.

• Capping the cost of credit is a job half done – here’s how to finish it

  A priest, a rabbi and an imam walked into a bank. It sounds like the start of a bad joke, but in fact it was the start of a very …

• Providing better financial services for individuals and small businesses

  Since the financial crisis of 2008 there have been significant changes in access to credit. Much has been written about difficulties faced by small businesses, and the behaviour of banks …

• The state of play in 2015

  With over 200 people attending across the Community Development Finance Institutions (CDFI) industry, as well as across the private, public and public sectors, there was an undeniable buzz around Community …

• Expanding credit unions sustainably

  The years since the turn of the century have been ones of growth and modernisation in the credit union sector. In 2000, there were 687 credit unions with 325,000 members …

• Helping the financial sector fulfil its civic duty

  When we step back and review how our lives work one thing that becomes abundantly clear is that they are entwined with the financial system. On a daily basis, we depend on financial services to enable us to eat, work and sleep …

 

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