RESEARCH

CFCFE seeks to provide high quality, accurate and accessible action research. This web page hosts all CFCFE’s research papers, currently available for free download. Scroll through the papers, or search using your preferred keywords. We welcome feedback and comment on all our research; contact us here.

CFCFE produces papers by its own personnel, as well as working with a range of partners, including the Centre for Co-operative Studies and the Financial Services Innovation Centre at University College Cork (Ireland), the Centre for Business in Society at Coventry University (UK), The Finance Innovation Lab (London, UK) and Small Change Ltd (Northern Ireland, UK).

Our current research themes are: Business Model & Strategy, Maximising Membership, Governance, Leadership, and Efficiency & Effectiveness. If you would like to partner with us for a publication, to enable your work to reach practitioners and policy-makers in Ireland, the UK and beyond, please contact Dr Paul A. Jones, Director or Research at CFCFE, p.a.jones@ljmu.ac.uk. Our Guidelines for Researchers can be viewed here.

Publications

Publications can be accessed at a cost for €5.99 for non-members. If you are a member, please ensure you Log In to access publications for no extra cost.

 

PUBLICATIONS DISPLAYED HERE

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Summary of Proceedings, Manchester Conference 17th January 2020

This short report summarises the presentations and discussions from CFCFE’s Credit Union Conference. ‘Meeting the Needs of Members Today and Tomorrow’. We were delighted to welcome 96 delegates from England, Ireland, Scotland, Romania, the USA and Wales to a day of wide-ranging topics relating to adapting to change to meet member needs. The Proceedings can be downloaded here or by clicking the image to the left.

Paul Jones drew attention to the following points as he closed the conference: 

  • The importance of leadership within the sector. He said that wherever credit unions succeed, there are always people with effective leadership skills driving those credit unions forward, coming not just from ‘the top’ but from everyone in the organisation.
  • The importance of technology. Success is also based, in the modern digital age, on technology, to deliver products and services and to build community and relationships between the members. Technology must now be at the forefront of the way in which all our credit unions do business.

Thank you to our presenters and attendees for their contributions. The conference programme and some presentations are available on our Events page.

Summary of Proceedings, Conference 21 May 2019

This is a brief record of the presentations and discussions that took place at our Successful Lending conference, in Dublin. Over 90 delegates from England, Ireland, Northern Ireland, and Scotland came together to share experience and best practice in meeting the borrowing needs of credit union members. The report can be downloaded here or by clicking the image to the left.

At the end of an information-filled day, Dr Paul Jones, Director of Research, noted some of the themes that had emerged, including the importance of:

  • Good analytics to evaluate and anticipate the needs of members
  • Rigorous analysis of loan performance to reveal effectiveness and profitability service delivery
  • Realising that much can be done to improve loan products and delivery within current legislative and regulatory constraints
  • Speed, efficiency and convenience of loan application and delivery channels
  • Ensuring our credit unions have a modern, digital suite of services to compete effectively
  • Working with Government and the regulator in the respective jurisdictions to ensure that legislation and regulation in relation to lending is fit for purpose.

Thanks to everyone who joined us. The credit union conference presentations are available here and the Registry’s here.

Measuring the ‘Credit Union Difference’ – a new Toolkit

The credit union difference is in part reflected in its social impact. A new Toolkit has been developed to enable credit unions to identify, measure and report on this.

The Toolkit is the result of a collaboration between Small Change, CFCFE and Liverpool John Moores University’s Research Unit for Financial Inclusion, funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, CCLA and CFCFE members. The project team worked closely during 2018/19 with GB credit unions to develop the materials, in particular CFCFE members Hoot Credit Union (Bolton) and Unify Credit Union (Wigan). The Toolkit comprises a Guide to reporting, a Framework spreadsheet to capture information systematically and Facilitator slide pack for leading a workshop on the process. This is a work in progress, and we aim to refine the Toolkit by working closely with more credit unions in the coming months.

For more information, click here or on the picture.

Summary of Proceedings, Members Conference 18 January 2019

This is a brief record of the presentations and discussions that took place at our recent conference in Manchester, attended by 100 delegates from the movement in England, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Romania and Scotland. The report can be downloaded here or by clicking the image to the right. The themes were Collaboration and Communities, with presentations from several practitioners.

A number of key points, practical insights and learning outcomes emerged during the day. At the close, Dr Paul Jones, Director of Research, picked out just a few, including the importance for collaboration of:

  • Clarity about business outcomes
  • Good and effective governance – and the role of the board in driving collaboration
  • Coping with the loss of autonomy
  • Recognising that there is not one sole path to collaboration – there are multiple models and approaches
  • Developing relationships based on trust.

And in relation to ensuring the social and economic difference of credit unions, Paul stressed the criticality of:

  • Ensuring a culture clearly based on co-operative values and principles
  • Communicating those values and principles to the membership and the community.

Paul ended by thanking all participants for coming to the conference and making the day such a success. Go raibh míle maith agaibh! Mulţumesc mult!

Further conference materials, including presentations and brochure, are available here.

Relevant pre-CFCFE publications

 

The directors, through their other institutions, have previously collaborated on several important projects. Some of those from the Research Unit for Financial Inclusion at Liverpool John Moores University are available here for download by clicking on the images below. Most recent examples are an exploration of best practice in governance for credit unions (2017) and a study of the credit union experience of GB’s Credit Union Expansion Project (2016). The earliest is the seminal paper by Dr Paul A. Jones and others on sustainable credit union development in Britain from 1998.

Further reports published by the Research Unit for Financial Inclusion are also available; contact us for further information.

Research approach

We aim to publish academically rigorous research papers and other outputs that will be of practical and actionable help to the Centre’s stakeholders, for them to identify and adopt new services, better engage their communities, improve their business practices, protect their values, mitigate the risks they face, and facilitate their collaboration for the common good.

We wish to be a thought leader in our field.

We collaborate with Members and other stakeholders to the greatest extent possible, to ensure that ideas and concepts are tested and proven.

We have a Research Advisory Board to support the Centre with its research methodology, standards and quality, and oversee peer review of publications.

We make our research available first to our members, and then to the public.

SCOPE

Our subjects include co-operatives and mutuals (such as credit unions), social enterprises (such as the UK’s community finance development insitutions) and co-operative banks and building societies, as well as social businesses in other sectors that engage with community finance (such as housing associations seeking affordable credit to residents). The Centre’s current focus is Ireland and the United Kingdom, but in due course we will undertake research across Europe. In all cases, our work is informed by experience and knowledge from around the world.

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OUR RESEARCHERS

We engage academic, professional and practitioner experts who are recognised for their expertise, integrity and quality of work in Centre-relevant areas. The Centre has a special, collaborative relationship with the Research Unit for Financial Inclusion at Liverpool John Moores University. Certain research papers and publications will be published in collaboration with the University.

If you would like to partner with us as a research author, please get in touch. Here are our Guidelines for Researchers.

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PROGRAMME

We select research projects in consultation with our members, funded by subscription and / or external grants, and seek to engage and work with similar organisations throughout Europe and internationally. We are happy to discuss projects brought to us by interested third parties such as academics, consultants or sector agencies.  Please contact us if you wish to discuss a research project partnership.