What was the Inclusive Economy Partnership Financial Inclusion Challenge?
Between August 2017 and September 2018, Challenge Works delivered the Inclusive Economy Partnership Accelerator, a key part of the partnership supported by the Cabinet Office and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).
The IEP is a partnership of businesses, civil society and government departments, working together to solve some of society’s toughest challenges, helping all communities and everyone within them to feel they belong to and can participate in the UK economy.
What happened?
In this strand of the IEP focussing on financial inclusion, we provided non-financial support to six organisations providing the financially "underserving" with the tools and capabilities to access and interact with fair financial products; products that will help individuals to manage problematic or persistent debt, to gain access to affordable credit options, and to create a savings buffer as part of healthy day-to-day budgeting.
From the spring to the autumn of 2017, we undertook a discovery phase to determine the best approach with greatest impact. An open call process for the Partnership Accelerator programme and support, including a grant of £20,000 ran from autumn 2017 until spring 2018.
From spring to autumn 2018, we delivered a rapid six-month Partnership Accelerator programme to help six financial inclusion innovations scale. Using the specific partnership accelerator model we developed, we focused on two components of support for the social innovators: support for scaling – provided directly from Nesta (and through procured specialist support) and support for development of partnerships – with delivery group members and others. Additionally, scaling-up was supported through innovators eceiving a grant of £20,000 funded by the DCMS.
Across the wider IEP accelerator programme, we engaged with 150 corporate partners who offered varying levels of support to the innovators and made 230 introductions between innovators and delivery partners. Eighty-nine per cent of social innovators surveyed indicated that they were extremely or very well progressed relative to their scaling plans by September 2018.
Impact of the prize
The six innovators developed 27 partnerships in total that increased their combined expected new revenue streams by £1,595,000.
Across the broader IEP, innovators have developed 100 confirmed partnerships, far exceeding the original programme target of nine partnerships.