Jul 17, 2018
Faisel Rahman is CEO and founder of Fair Finance, a social enterprise tackling financial exclusion which has built a reputation for entrepreneurial growth, social and commercial rigour.
Faisal talks about how working with Grameen and the World Bank in Bangladesh sowed a seed that led to Fair Finance, and how understanding what makes high cost credit providers successful leads to designing products that people actually want.
Millions of underbanked people are either treated badly by the mainstream or exploited by non-mainstream providers.
Responsible Finance providers and credit unions should aim to put high cost lenders out of business by being a better alternative and ensuring they are customers' first choice.
Data disclosure and transparency features largely in this episode too. And responsible finance providers which can prove their social impact and their commercial viability must increase their ambitions of scale – high cost credit is a multi-million pound industry.