Our 2022 Member Day is for everyone working in community development finance to learn, share best practice, and find new ways to boost access to finance for people, businesses and social enterprises.
It has been designed based on members’ needs and requests and includes practical workshops and peer-to-peer support to learn from and with others tackling similar issues.
The programme features 11 comprehensive workshops (delegates can each attend three during the day). Read more about the workshop leaders and speakers below, and book your places here.
We are grateful to Unity Trust Bank, Shawbrook Bank, Triodos Bank, incuto, Singlify and SOAR for their support of the member day.
Workshops Round 1 (11:10 – 12:00):
Workshop 1A: Building a sustainable and scalable CDFI: a 50-minute MBA for CDFI leaders exploring the top three things they need to focus on as leaders to create strong organisations. RF members only.
This workshop is primarily designed for leaders of business lending CDFIs; leaders of social enterprise and personal lending CDFIs are also welcome.
Workshop facilitator Jill Boggiss is an organisational and leadership development consultant and coach.
Workshop outcomes: leadership lessons for CEOs to navigate scale and sustainability during a challenging economic time.
Workshop 1B: The FCA’s new Consumer Duty.
This session is for personal lenders (CEOs / leaders / team).
Workshop facilitator: Addleshaw Goddard.
Workshop outcomes: Under the new Consumer Duty evidencing outcomes is key. You will understand important considerations when implementing the Duty.
Workshop 1C: Measuring your impact to show the difference your CDFI makes: CDFI lending has a huge impact; what can we measure and report that tells the social impact story?
This workshop is relevant to teams across all CDFI-lending sectors.
Workshop facilitator: Heidi Fisher.
Workshop outcomes: understanding what impact / outcome metrics are worth measuring and managing; ideas for presenting impact that will resonate with your stakeholders.
Workshop 1D: Marketing and pipeline building for social enterprise lenders.
Workshop facilitator: Jamie Veitch.
Workshop outcomes: Learn from peers how each CDFI approaches marketing and what works, and discuss strategies to increase the pipeline for CDFIs.
Workshops Round 2 (1:15 – 2:10pm):
Workshop 2A: Effective messaging: a session for personal-lending CDFIs about how to create effective messages which cut-through and grab attention so journalists and potential customers understand what you do.
Workshop leaders: RF head of comms Jamie Veitch and Jo Davison, journalist for 30+ years with experience writing for and editing newspapers and across media.
Workshop outcomes: understand how to develop, test and refine messages; different types of media coverage (news, features, etc) and what journalists are looking for; hooks; effective pitching; and getting memorable messages across in an interview.
Workshop 2B: Working with brokers on referrals: A session with the National Association of Commercial Brokers (NACFB).
For CEOs and teams in business and social enterprise lending CDFIs.
Workshop leaders: Nicholas Murphy, Membership Manager, NACFB and Alex Beardsley, Joint Managing Director, ABL.
Workshop outcomes: understand how to build relationships with local brokers, educate them and build a steady pipeline of business referrals.
Workshop 2C: What to look for when searching for new suppliers: When exploring Open Banking or lending systems, what do you need to consider and how can you measure the benefits and mitigate potential risks?
For teams in business and social enterprise lending CDFIs.
Chaired by Brendan Gilmore, BPG Strategy Ltd, with speakers Andrew Duncan, Founder and CEO, Soar; Maarten Rooney, co-Founder and CEO, Singlify; Andrew Rabbitt, CEO and co-founder, Incuto.
Workshop outcomes: learn how to assess what you need in digital transformation; how to identify risks and where you might be able to land some quick wins.
Workshop 2D: What information do investors look for?
This session is co-designed with the Impact Investing Institute and will explore the expectations of investors and how CDFIs can provide this information.
For CEOs and teams in business and social enterprise lending CDFIs.
Workshop leaders: Shadi Brazell, Programme Manager, Impact Investing Institute; Jason James, Relationship Manager, Unity Trust Bank.
Workshop outcomes: Unpicking what financial and impact information investors want during due diligence, and what CDFIs can do to help the process.
Workshops Round 3 (2:20 – 3:10pm):
Workshop 3A: A sustainable investment model
This workshop is primarily designed for leaders of personal lending CDFIs; leaders of business and social enterprise lending CDFIs are also welcome.
Workshop leaders: Warren Mutch, Director of Structured Finance, Shawbrook Bank; Holly Piper, Fair4All Finance.
Workshop outcomes: Understanding of the range of debt options available to CDFIs and what a sustainable investment model for CDFIs could look like.
Workshop 3B: Net zero
This workshop, for business and social enterprise lending teams, will explore regulations and reporting enterprises are likely to need to comply with to support the UK’s 2050 net zero target, and how CDFIs can expect to support their customers.
Workshop leaders: Simon Crichton, Head of Relationship Banking, Triodos Bank; Shanika Amarasekara, Chief Impact Officer, British Business Bank.
Workshop outcomes: Understanding of what businesses will need to do to reduce emissions, so CDFIs can design products to support them.
Workshop 3C: Consumers, vulnerability and GDPR
This session is for personal lenders (CEOs / leaders / team).
Workshop leaders: Money Advice Trust.
More about the Member Day here. Book your places here.
Our thanks to our sponsors for their support of the member day:
Unity Trust Bank
Unity Trust Bank is an award-winning commercial bank that uses banking to improve the lives of UK communities.
Now in our 38th year, we help businesses and organisations to prosper and address social, economic and environmental needs.
We offer day-to-day banking services and aim to become the bank of choice for all socially-minded organisations.
Shawbrook Bank
Over the last decade we have built a new type of bank that is designed to accommodate individuality, diversity and the dynamics of the modern world.
With over 300,000 active and engaged customers, Shawbrook provides highly personalised, practical lending and savings products to individuals, businesses and real estate investors.
To serve the evolving needs of our customers, and to meet the scale of our potential, we continue to deliver on our purpose: to power up ingenuity to create opportunity, every single day.
Triodos Bank
Triodos Bank UK provides specialist, sustainable finance for businesses and organisations.
We believe banking can be a catalyst for making greater social and environmental impact and we can help support more organisations to make positive change.
Triodos has a strong track record of supporting accredited CDFIs.
incuto
At incuto, we believe that everyone should have access to ethical, affordable financial services.
We support ethical finance providers to be resilient and sustainable, so they can help more people.
We have created tools and partnerships which reduce costs, improve services and are socially profitable.
Singlify
Singlify provides technology that empowers Inclusive Finance Providers to dramatically change access to financial support for underserved communities. We do this by providing an end-to-end loan management application for Inclusive Finance providers built on the Salesforce platform.
Singlify software has been consistently proven to help CDFIs and MFIs improve efficiency, reduce costs, and grow rapidly. We see ourselves as the long-term digital transformation partner for Inclusive Finance Providers. We benefit from an excellent understanding of CDFI and MFI operations and first-hand experience of how best to introduce new technology to our customers.
Soar
Soar makes community focused financial services desirable with our white-labelled mobile banking platform that automates lending, savings and money management. It makes access to affordable credit easy for everyone and helps consumers & business manage their finances better, save more and use appropriate and fairly priced lending.
We have a modern cloud banking platform for those wanting to deliver fair finance. We’ve included mobile, web and cloud apps (as you’d expect) with the usual suspects like digital messaging, payments, credit checks, advanced loan calculations, open banking so that you are digital, available 24/7 and as desirable as the likes of Monzo.