Scaling Affordable Lending: Case Studies

In 2017, Henry and Morris (2017) reviewed the role, scale and scope of the affordable lending sector within the segmented and dynamic landscape of UK consumer credit.1 Observing a history of fragmented, patchy and intermittent provision, the review outlines the strategic challenges to achieving a national range and scale of resilient and sustainable providers of affordable and suitable financial products.
The review ends by noting a number of recent developments in response to the challenges of scaling up, including partnership-based growth projects, direct targeting of specific product and consumer segments and expansion of online provision through enhanced use of digital infrastructures. By connecting community finance provision across the UK2, there is growing evidence of scaling to achieve greater sustainable geographical and market reach and depth across affordable lending markets.
This report provides case studies of such organisational developments in affordable lending. Each high profile example demonstrates, from differing origins, a development response to achieving scale to meet the need for fair and affordable consumer credit.
A case study summary is provided in Table 1.1. This describes the activities and achievements of the five initiatives and sets out, in the last column, key ways in which the organisations have been able to achieve scale and some of the challenges to scaling up that they have experienced.