Further reading

Performance

Since our formation in 2015 we have grown steadily. We have to date provided 400,000 loans (totalling £85m) to 100,000 customers across the UK. We are a profitable business with a clear growth strategy to 2030. The uniqueness of what we do, coupled with our social impact, has resulted in dozens of awards over the years for innovative lending, vulnerable customer support and financial inclusion.

Backers

Over the years since our inception we have been supported by all the key social investors in the UK: Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Robertson Trust, Big Issue Invest, Centrica, Esmée Fairbairn, Fair4All Finance, Social Investment Scotland, Charities Aid Foundation, Key Fund and Barrow Cadbury. We have to date recycled our investment over five times to lend over £85m since we started business. We are now securing commercial investment to scale further over the next five years.

Products

We have developed our service in line with the needs of the people we seek to help and we do not provide cash loans. Instead, we have two financial products: a ‘Core’ loan for a specific large household appliance, and a (revolving credit) ‘Shopping Card’ which allows our customers to purchase smaller items from around one dozen accredited high street retail partners who share our values. You may also have heard of our ‘Food Club’ which is a version of the Shopping Card for use with one of our retail partners – Iceland Foods – both in-store and online. Apart from the Food Club which is 0%, all our lending is at an interest rate of 4.25% per month on outstanding balances.

Technology

We own our Intellectual Property and have a bespoke decisioning and loans management system developed, built and maintained by our technology partners, the global IT specialists, CGI.

Growth

We are a social lender and we have grown strongly and profitably since our formation in 2015. In the last two years we have also made operational and technological investments to ensure we are set for future scale. We have an upward trajectory in terms of customer demand and product profitability, and a downward trajectory in terms of bad debt and provisioning. We are experts in lending affordably to people on low incomes. Our current customer lifetime bad debt rate is 12%.

Social Value

Our social value is extremely high. Independent social impact analysis and reporting for 2021 and 2022 has indicated for every £1 lent, over £16 of social value was created with a Fair for You loan. In 2021 and 2022 alone this equated to nearly a quarter of a billion pounds of social value for our customers.

A newly released report on the impact of the Iceland Food Club, which has now been accessed by 30,000 houesholds, show a decrease in Food Bank use, and better diets and improved financial stability for customers.

Strategic Direction

We would never have the marketing resources to reach everyone who needs us. Therefore, our growth strategy is powered by leveraging the close partnerships we have with retailers. We ‘springboard’ from our retail partners’ marketing to acquire our customers. This means we have low acquisition costs and a high potential customer gain. With further investment to 2030 we predict a customer base of 150,000 (currently 40,000). Moreover, the business model and technology behind Fair for You are significantly scalable.

Put simply, increased investment = increased customer growth = increased financial and social returns.