Colleen Ebbitt from JPMorganChase and Danielle Davis from First Enterprise join us today for a fascinating chat about listening to and supporting under-served businesses so they can thrive. How?

Well, Colleen covers JPMorganChase's small business philanthropy, which supports small business owners on their journeys to growth.

A £4m initiative, supported by JPMorganChase, is strengthening community development finance institutions' operations and helping CDFIs to deploy small business loans to great businesses which can't get the finance they need elsewhere.

"The problems that we're trying to solve are complex, multifaceted. They cannot be solved by private sector alone, public sector alone, social sector alone. So the work we do should focus on solving problems and creating value," says Colleen, explaning JPMorganChase's philosophy on the value of partnerships and creating community impact. She also talks about:

• the unique value of CDFIs as experts in supporting underserved businessses and under-invested regions

• how CDFIs take a relationship-based approach: "very different than other parts of the access to finance ecosystem that have become much more automated and quite frankly can make it even more difficult or create additional barriers for accessing finance"

• complementarity with the British Business Bank's groundbreaking Community ENABLE Funding (CEF) Programme

• the mid- and long-term potential outlook and impact

• being part of a "sea-change" by wortking with Responsible Finance, the BBB and CDFIs

First Enterprise is a CDFI which has been around since 1989. Danielle Davis covers how it has always had a strong focus on supporting underserved businesses, including those led by female and ethnic minority founders.

She describes how the JPMorganChase-supported capacity-building programme is giving First Enterprise new "oomph". It's a potent combination, "capital plus capacity" – First Enterprise is an accredited lender through the BBB's CEF programme, and Danielle explains how this means First Enterprise can support many more businesses. Also in Danielle's segment:

• how First is developing while maintaining everything its customers value such as non-financial business support

• what AI can enable

• refinancing short-term high-interest debt, with examples of a business which First Enterprise were able to save more than £30,000 pounds a month by refinancing stacked deals

What next?

• More about Responsible Finance and our member CDFIs: https://responsiblefinance.org.uk

"The only gig in town came with 60% interest, because we were considered subprime lending. It meant that every payment of £15,000 included £9,000 interest." Business owner David, who subsequently saved more than £80,000 in interest a year by refinancing with a CDFI.

When it comes to high-cost credit, most of us think of personal borrowing and payday loans. But the quote above comes from a business owner. More than a decade after the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) took over regulating consumer lending and introduced the cap on payday loans, there's a new high-cost loan story unfolding. Up to one in four loan enquiries to Community Development Finance Institutions (CDFIs) now come from small businesses seeking to escape unsustainable high-cost loans. It rarely makes headlines, but it is leaving some firms fighting to survive.

In this episode Eleanor Russell, Policy and Research Manager at Responsible Finance, describes the high-cost business loans crisis.

A community development finance institution (CDFI), SWIG Finance, was able to refinance the business owner quoted above, saving his firm £80,000 to £90,000 of interest a year.

Eleanor has more jaw-dropping statistics and describes what banks and government can do so that more businesses become aware of ethical, responsible lending options through CDFIs, earlier.

Kate Pender is CEO of Fair4All Finance, an organisation launched to improve the financial services sector so it better serves people who are underserved and excluded.

She was appointed chief executive in 2024 having worked with Fair4All since its inception in 2019: "I drank the Kool-Aid and got hooked on the work." Kate is also a member of the Government's financial inclusion committee. She describes Fair4All's evolving work and covers:

• three highlights of its research in 2024 with fascinating implications about the potential to support social purpose lenders via sustained subsidy and about testing different types of guarantee

• advocacy for community development finance institutions (CDFIs) and supporting innovation

• the No Interest Loans Scheme pilot

• using guarantees to lever additional capital

• the importance of "hearts and minds" stories to enable co-investment and partnership

• the scale of the addressable market, customer journeys and "green shoots" on referrals from the banking sector to CDFIs

• the need for regulatory clarity to catalyse concerted change across financial services

• how Fair4All balances impact and risk tolerance when investing in organisations which support underserved people

• Kate's career before Fair4All, including supporting small businesses to grow

• the challenges Fair4All has faced as a young organisation

• tips for anyone taking up a CEO role as an internal candidate

• the potential impact of a National Financial Inclusion Strategy

• how Fair4All will continue to support CDFIs and credit unions and its key priorities for 2025

We interviewed Kate in December 2024 for this podcast, published in January 2025.

What next?

• More about Fair4AllFinance: https://fair4allfinance.org.uk

• More about Responsible Finance and our member CDFIs: https://responsiblefinance.org.uk