derbyloans is a community development financial institution (CDFI).
That is an independent, not-for-profit business that exists to bring together
public and private funding to provide affordable loans to reduce social
and financial exclusion.
Derby City Council played a major role in the set up of derbyloans and
continues to be supportive. Our other partners include Rolls-Royce, the
Derbyshire, NatWest, Home Housing Association and Derwent Housing Association.
The list is growing all the time.
derbyloans has been set up to provide credit to people, businesses
and community groups in Derby who can’t get credit from the well-known
banks and building societies.
This may be because of past financial problems or maybe they just never
got round to opening a bank account and now feel that they might get rejected.
They may have gone to high cost lenders in the past because they felt that
there was no alternative and now realise how expensive they can be. They
might want to start a business or become self-employed but don’t
have a track record in what they want to do and are finding it hard to
raise the money. They might just be a few people who want to start a local
community business and need a small loan to get things started.
derbyloans is a community organisation
which doesn’t have to distribute profits to shareholders or owners.
That keeps our costs low, so interest rates can be kept low too –
just a little higher than the banks.
Some of the things we don’t do are also important
We don’t encourage our customers to take on bigger and bigger
loans repayable over longer and longer times.
We don’t pay our staff commission based on the amount of money
they lend to customers.
We don’t tie customers to derbyloans. Once a customer has had
a loan from us, we hope they will come back, but if better rates are available
from their bank, we’ll give them a reference to help them access
the whole range of banking services.
