Faisel RAHMAN - Fair Finance

Faisel Rahman has a background in international development including work at the Grameen Bank and World Bank where he focused on developing the microfinance sector. He has worked briefly as an Underwriter for a syndicate at Lloyds of London where he focused on Risk Assessment methodologies, and has edited and published two books with Directory of Social Change for the voluntary sector - the "Guide to Major Trust – 2000" and the "National Lottery Yearbook - 1998/1999".

In 2000 he joined The Environment Trust, a Development Trust in East London, where he developed a peer lending microcredit programme and established the East End Microcredit Consortium which has helped nearly 300 women start businesses Maintaining low default rates and high impact amongst excluded communities the project has received accolades from a range of organisations including the Bank of England and the New York Federal Reserve Bank as well as the Neighbourhood Renewal Unit. Realising that many potential and poor entrepreneurs suffered debt and financial management problems he developed the Money Matters Project, an innovative debt advice project, with three local East London Housing Associations to help highly indebted tenants. The project has successfully helped over 160 people repay nearly £1m in debt through money management. The project is now expanding with new HA's and has proven that sustainable debt advice services are possible .

In 2005 he integrated the two projects to create Fair Finance, a credit based social enterprise in East London set up to tackle usurious and unfair lenders preying on the poor. Through Fair Finance he hopes to expose the prejudices lending institutions have against poor people and offer a real (social) alternative to loan sharks and pawns shops. In its first year it has seen over 1000 people and lent over £500,000, with loans sizes as small as £200. as well as publicising the impacts of local loan sharks and other expensieve lenders.

Faisel is a board member of the Debt on Our Doorstep Campaign and European Microfinance Network.