Life is unpredictable and any of us can be hit by a crisis at any time. When these unexpected events bring with them a serious financial impact they are referred to as ‘income shocks’. Over a quarter of the UK adult population will have suffered an income shock in the last year. Millions have neither ‘rainy day’ savings nor access to family and friends who may offer temporary assistance in such a time of crisis.
Without an adequate social security safety net many people’s last resort is high-cost borrowing in the form of credit cards, payday loans, overdrafts and pawnbrokers. This toxic combination of an unexpected financial challenge arriving suddenly in the absence of protective factors pushes as many as one million people per year into serious problem debt.
Common Change has been addressing these issues in communities around the USA for over a decade and in late 2016 requested our help to extend their operation to the UK. As well as taking care of the formalities of registering with the Charities Commission and establishing a UK banking operation Goodlabs has been able to provide strategic support with the adaptation of the Common Change model into the British cultural and regulatory context.