Our user researcher Sandy Rushton and Ciara Davies from our partners at Metro Moneywise Credit Union spoke on a panel at FTT Mutuals conference yesterday about green home lending and sustainable, mutual models of finance!
Thank you to the #FTTMutuals team, especially Micha P. for organising a really interesting day yesterday. I was grateful to share a stage with Ciara Davies, Clare Jenkinson, Maria Dutton, and our chair Sophie Mason to talk about how mutual finance organisations are empowering communities for a sustainable future. It was a really interesting discussion and I learned a lot from my fellow panellists! 💡 While not a finance mutual, People Powered Retrofit are in fact a mutual organisation (we're a community benefit society)! Sustainability is at the core of what mutual organisations do; this term can encompass environmental action, climate justice, and carbon emission reduction but also sustainable business practices and building resilience in our communities. This theme came through strongly from all the speakers, and Clare talked about how it's a common thread through all of Foresters' work (from advice, to investment, to their office buildings!). 💡 Collaboration between mutuals was highlighted as vitally important for the sustainability of the sector and to overcome challenges that individual mutuals have with education, capacity, and resourcing for new products. Ciara talked about how, in Greater Manchester, The SoundPound Group are showing how credit unions can work together and with civic bodies to meet their members needs in new ways. Maria shared some examples from Ireland of best practices. Building these links with other mutuals and learning from each other was another key theme of the panel. 💡 Off the shelf solutions are going to be important for sustainable practices to scale: individual mutuals don’t have the budget to develop everything from scratch. We're working with Association of British Credit Unions on our Green Home Improvement Loan pilot to develop training materials and marketing assets so that more and more credit unions can share resources and achieve effective green home lending. Thanks again to everyone involved with organising the #FTTMutuals sessions!
