Salad Money Impact Report 22-23 WEB - Flipbook - Page 5
SALAD MONEY’S
2022-2023 IMPACT:
ASTONISHING YET
COULD BE BIGGER
As we prepared this report the media
covered an 83 year-old Newport woman
caught lending money illegally.
A Cardi昀昀 Crown Court judge
described Tabitha Richardson as
“threatening and menacing,” saying
she “ran roughshod” over rules
designed to protect borrowers, before
imposing a two-year suspended jail
sentence.
Richardson doesn’t 昀椀t the stereotype
of an illegal lender. This may be
fodder to journalists but is no surprise
to anyone who read 2023’s ‘As one
door closes’1 or watched BBC’s
Newsnight programme featuring
illegal lenders.
With more people struggling in the
cost of living crisis and a growing
credit vacuum for low-income
households, business is good for loan
sharks. It’s easy to see the damage
illegal lenders – who certainly don’t
care about “Consumer Duty” – wreak
on families.
We must also recognise the harms
caused by legal but inappropriate
credit, and by people who can
1
a昀昀ord to borrow being needlessly
excluded by lenders dependent on
credit scores. The thinktank Demos
points out that the crisis has “upped
the stakes” regarding the “value
good credit can bring to households
and the damage that poor access
to credit or access to irresponsible
credit can do.” Access to “responsible
and fair credit has never been more
important,” it says.2
Those of us working to address
昀椀nancial exclusion practically will
agree. Salad Money has made
extraordinary progress in 2022-23,
accelerating the impact we make in a
myriad of ways. We are proud of the
outcomes we achieve for otherwise
昀椀nancially-excluded people. We do
not advocate lending to applicants
who cannot a昀昀ord to repay a loan.
But as a social enterprise we are at
the vanguard of building a fairer and
more inclusive market.
Sir Tim Melville-Ross,
Chair, Salad Finance Ltd.
applicants’ wellbeing. Their empathy
and understanding – people power
– complements our cutting-edge AI
and machine learning capabilities, so
we can o昀昀er fair lending to the UK’s
excluded key workers. This report
features accounts from many of our
employees, customers and grant
recipients alongside powerful data to
illustrate our impact.
Now we need regulators,
policymakers and banks to step up.
There has been progress, and we are
grateful for the input from many who
will read this report, but we could do
even more to address the pernicious
e昀昀ects of bad, ugly or no credit for
excluded households.
Our determined team is resolute in
their commitment to customers’ and
See page 12. 2 (Demos, The Good Credit Index, August 2023).
2022-2023 Impact Report
5
