RESEARCH
The Swoboda Centre seeks to provide high quality, accurate and applied research from experts in their field. This web page hosts all our 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 our Director of Research, Dr Paul A. Jones, at p.a.jones@ljmu.ac.uk.
The Centre 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 p.a.jones@ljmu.ac.uk. Our Guidelines for Researchers can be viewed here.
Reflections Series
Reflections: A Different Future for British Credit Unions
British Credit Unions: A Different Future Our Reflections series provides a platform for practitioners to share their experience, insights and ideas with the credit union movement and its stakeholders. In this new paper, Jonathan Moore, formerly CEO of Stockport...
Purposively Purposeful, from the Reflections Series
New paper now available: Purposively Purposeful: the case for credit union clarity of purpose, by Matt Bland, CEO of Co-op Credit Union in Britain. This is the second in our Reflections series, based in practitioner experience rather than research. In this piece,...
Managing Risk in a Credit Union, from the Reflections Series
The first paper from the Swoboda Reflections Series is from Caroline Domanski MBE, CEO at No1 CopperPot Credit Union, the largest police credit union in Britain. In this report, Caroline describes and analyses her experience of developing a risk management...
Introducing the Swoboda Reflections Series
Swoboda Research Centre is proud to introduce the Reflections Series: a platform for practitioners - executives, directors and staff of credit unions and their stakeholders - to present their views and ideas. These papers are rooted in the experience of...
Publications
Deduction Lending: Does it add up for low income borrowers?
Swoboda was delighted to collaborate on a project led by the Financial Inclusion Centre to examine credit union deduction lending and its benefits for low income borrowers in Britain - where repayments are automatically taken at source from either salary (payroll...
Templates to help manage loan declines positively
After publication in November of the Managing Loan Declines: A Best Practice Manual, based on research by Coventry University and Swoboda Research Centre and funded by Fair4All Finance, we held a very well-attended webinar in January where the authors of the manual...
New report: Managing Loan Declines
Access to credit is is a vital pat of many people's financial management, especially in difficult economic times. But especially in such times, affordability and credit records come under further pressure and loan applications may be unsuccessful. At best, a...
Credit unions and gambling: a practical guide to support members
Many credit unions, particularly those in Britain using open banking, are seeing increasing signs of problem gambling in the expenditure patterns of members applying for loans. Up to 1.2 million adults in the UK are classified as ‘problem gamblers’ and in Ireland...
Social Value Reporting and Credit Union Legitimacy
The latest paper from Swoboda is now available. It is written by our 2021 Credit Union Research Prizewinners, Professor Martin Quinn (Queens University Belfast), Dr Peter Cleary (University College Cork) and Dr Martijn van der Steen (University of Groningen). The...
Where the financial system works against credit unions
Swoboda is excited to publish a new report from Ismail Ertürk, of the Alliance Manchester Business School, on how credit unions are made vulnerable by the way the financial system is managed by policymakers and regulators. Ismail's detailed and challenging argument...
New! Maximising member savings: success, opportunity or threat?
The first object of credit unions noted in Irish and British legislation is the “promotion of thrift among its members by the accumulation of their savings”. For it is through saving and the building of assets, rather than through borrowing, that members achieve...
Effective CEOs: What Sets Them Apart?
Another new report from CFCFE: Effective CEOs: What Sets Them Apart?. "At a credit union, an effective CEO can mean the difference between flourishing - achieving the goals of member service and financial performance or foundering - at best, forfeiting...
SME Lending and Irish Credit Unions
Download the new paper from CFCFE: The Opportunity for Irish Credit Unions in SME Lending. In a world still recovering from the financial crisis of the last decade and the health crisis of the last 18 months, credit unions face two challenges in building their SME...
New Report: Marketing Credit Unions to Millennials
Many credit unions are seeing an ageing of their membership, as they have retained the loyalty of the people who joined when the credit unions were founded, but they have not recruited those members' children and grandchildren. This report, focused on millennials...
Managing declines fairly: credit unions self-report
This is the first output from an exciting programme of research that aims to evaluate how credit unions can manage loan declines most positively. In this report, James Fell, who many credit unionists will know from Quo Money, presents the results of a survey of 64...
Time for a New Core System?
Over the last few years, the importance of flexible, efficient and modern technology has risen up the agenda for many credit unions. 2020 has made this even more pronounced, as the ability of organisation to serve members effectively while staff are remote from...
New publication on credit unions and social impact
We're delighted to release a report from Dr Olive McCarthy of the Centre for Co-operative Studies at Cork University Business School (and CFCFE's Advisory Board) on credit union perceptions of the opportunities and challenges for measuring and reporting on social...
How to run a virtual AGM
In the summer we produced an assessment of the rules around credit unions holding Annual General Meetings (AGMs) online, instead of or - as well as - face-to-face (Virtual AGMs: a guide for credit unions. Part I: the Compliance Issues). Now we are releasing a new...
Top Performing Credit Union Boards
The ability of a board to do its job effectively is a vital feature of a successful credit union. In this paper, the experienced credit union consultant Lucy Harr considers how credit union boards can become high performers and thereby excel in delivering value to...
Virtual AGMs – what’s allowed?
Annual General Meetings (AGMs) are critical events in the year of well-governed co-operatives, and credit unions take them very seriously. Credit union AGMs are traditionally face-to-face meetings, but many are anticipating a challenge to doing theirs in the...
The Credit Union Difference: Responding to COVID-19 in Ireland
We have now produced the second paper in our series on the response by credit unions to the COVID-19 pandemic, this time covering Irish credit unions. The paper can be viewed and downloaded here. (Last week CFCFE published a well-received report on the response of...
Responses to COVID-19 in Great Britain
A fundamental principle of the credit union sector is ‘people helping people’. The COVID-19 health crisis, with its associated social lockdown and economic shocks, has presented operational and commercial challenges to credit unions that go way beyond previous...
Financial capability and credit union members
Now available - CFCFE's fourth publication so far in 2020. Financial capability: supporting members towards greater financial wellbeing is authored by Dr Lindsey Appleyard, Professor Sally Gibb and Dr Hussan Aslam at Coventry University’s Centre for Business in...
Open Banking and Credit Unions
We are delighted to present our latest publication, Open Banking: An introductory guide to credit unions, written by Marloes Nicholls, Head of Programmes at the Finance Innovation Lab. Marloes presented a summary of the paper to attendees at our Manchester...
New publication: credit union values
“What is the most overlooked quality of the world’s most successful credit unions? Answer: their values.” So opens this thought-provoking paper on credit union values by Ed Mayo, the Secretary General of Co-operatives UK and a member of the CFCFE Research Advisory...
Where does the CEO’s time go?
Earlier in the year, CFCFE members raised two issues that we decided to investigate through a survey. These issues were: The time and effort they spend managing regulatory and compliance issues, and The difficulty they have in cutting through day-to-day...
Remuneration of credit union directors
This research paper is published today. This is a 'hot topic', and the paper does not advocate for or against the introduction of remuneration for board directors elected from the membership who traditionally have not been been paid. But we are aware that some...
‘Borrowing from a credit union’
Back in September 2018 we circulated this short report to our members, and for several it has already been a valuable input to the development of their own lending strategies. The paper summarises survey and focus group data from two large credit unions on the...
A business case for a central finance facility
We sent this paper to our members in September, considering the benefits of a 'credit union for credit unions'. It's now available to non-members - download here. Using case studies from the US, Canada and Australia, the paper shows how central finance facilities...
Lessons Learned by US Credit Unions in Mortgage Lending
Over the past 40 years home mortgages have grown to represent about half of credit union lending in the States. This paper was developed in the belief that the US experience would provide useful insights to credit unions over here that are looking to expand into...
The Revolving Credit Opportunity for Credit Unions
This project is a ‘think / do’ paper on revolving credit as an opportunity for credit unions in Ireland and Great Britain. Revolving lines of credit are a core service of credit unions in other countries, notably Australia, Canada and the USA. This paper identifies...
The Irish Credit Union Business Model: Is it still fit for purpose?
Our first publication was a review of the business model for credit unions in Ireland, and the case for change. The key messages are that: the objective evidence demonstrates the case for change to the existing business model, international examples show an...
Swoboda Credit Union Research Prize
2022 Research Prizewinners Announced!
UCC to work with Swoboda to develop credit union pathways to net zero The world is facing a climate and biodiversity emergency and all financial institutions, including credit unions, have a role to play in tacking climate change and achieving net zero emissions....
2021 Research Prize Winners!
CFCFE is delighted to announce that the 2021 Credit Union Research Prize has been awarded to a team of leading academics who will be addressing the highly topical issue of social value, or impact, reporting for credit unions. Dr Peter Cleary (Cork University...
2020 Prizewinners!
We're excited to announce the winners of our first ever Credit Union Research Prize! In March this year, CFCFE launched a competition for this inaugural award. The Prize is aimed at bringing new voices and ideas into the sector, by supporting researchers who wish...
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.
Relevant pre-CFCFE publications
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.
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.
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.