Category Archives: Uncategorized

A new Renters and Leaseholders Protection Agency (RLPA)

Today (14th July 2016), The Financial Inclusion Centre publishes a pamphlet calling for the creation of a Renters and Leaseholders Protection Agency (RLPA) to protect renters and leaseholders from unfair, abusive practices and to help raise the quality of homes more »

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Encouraging savers, supporting the overindebted

Today, The Financial Inclusion Centre and partners published a new report, Britain’s debt, how much is too much?, commissioned by the ACCA. The report examines household financial resilience, its links with household income, credit use and overindebtedness with a focus more »

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Better and Brighter-Responsible Rent to Own Alternatives

Today, The Financial Inclusion Centre publishes a new report into the Rent to Own (RTO) sector. Over 400,000 households, almost exclusively on low incomes and reliant to some degree on benefits, take out expensive credit to spread the cost of purchasing more »

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What has the EU ever done for us? The EU referendum and consumers

UK citizens have gained much from a huge range of consumer and social protection measures introduced through, or influenced by, EU legislation and regulations[1]. Consumer protection measures can be found across a wide range of markets including financial services, food, more »

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The ‘Financial Advice Gap’ – it’s the economics, stupid

HM Treasury and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) have recently launched the Financial Advice Market Review (FAMR)[1] to address the so-called ‘financial advice gap’ in the UK – concerns that large numbers of consumers do not have access to good more »

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London Social Housing Bond

We recognise at the Financial Inclusion Centre that London isn’t the only region in the UK facing a housing crisis. But, for a number of reasons, the crisis does seem particularly acute in London and requires special interventions. We take the view more »

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Financial Services Priorities – 2015 and beyond

We have spent the first weeks of the New Year undertaking a stocktake of the critical policy issues in financial services to help us plan our work and target our campaigning activities. Below we summarise what we think are the more »

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Performance of Uk and OECD pension funds – briefing paper

The investment returns achieved by pension funds are critical. Underperformance affects the retirement incomes of savers, affects the levels of contributions required by employers, employees, the state and other savers, and has other wider externality costs for the real economy. more »

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Payday Lending: fixing a broken market

Sponsored by the ACCA, the objectives of the report were to: develop a detailed understanding of the business models underpinning UK payday lending; inform the debate about the level and structure of the new charge cap; and examine which other more »

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Can credit unions offer payday loan alternatives that are affordable and viable?

Our long-awaited evaluation of London Mutual Credit Union’s payday loan scheme has been published today. The report demonstrates that not only does affordable short term borrowing through a credit union have the potential to be an effective way of diverting more »

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