Giving Credit where it's Due: Promoting Financial Inclusion through Quality Credit Unions

Abstract

Early in 2005, HM Treasury established a Financial Inclusion Task Fund to support initiatives to tackle financial exclusion. It envisages that a substantial proportion of this funding will be allocated to third sector lenders such as credit unions operating in low-income areas. During the 1980s and early 1990s, public investment in credit unions was misdirected. This resulted in community credit unions remaining small and having only marginal impact within financially excluded communities. Since 1999, significant transformation has taken place in the credit union sector, which has resulted in credit unions developing as market-oriented and commercial social enterprises with a capacity to tackle financial exclusion both imaginatively and effectively at a borough wide, city-wide and sometimes county wide level.

Notes

¹ FSA aggregate figures in December 2004 recorded 487,898 adult credit union members in Britain.