Monday 13 September
Small business owners in the UK are turning to CDFIs as a result of high street banks continuing to refuse loan applications, according to a page 3 article on microfinance in today’s Financial Times.
The article quotes the cdfa‘s CEO Bernie Morgan on the pressures that CDFIs are under as they face demand for larger loan sizes than they are used to dealing with.
“We will always maintain our mission to finance where the banks won’t – but it is increasingly difficult,” says Bernie in the article.
The piece also looks at a recent loan provided by cdfa member Fredericks Foundation to Sky Garden, a Cheltenham based green roofing business.
“The hoops we had to go through were significantly more demanding than any of the banks would have expected us to go through,” says Steve Raftery, Sky Garden’s managing director. “I would liken it to the processes the bank managers used to go through, when they liked to look at the whites of your eyes, as opposed to asking a computer, like they do today.”