Background to IFcic

To help address the issues that 616,500 individuals in the south east face in their daily lives of being excluded from conventional forms of finance, the South East England Development Agency, the CDFA and the south east CDFIs began to explore and realise the benefits of ‘win-win collaboration’ or to coin the American phrase, "co-opetition" which infers a combination of co-operation and competition for the benefit of all partners. This led to further exploration into the best legal constitution and governing structure for the south east CDFIs to work together with each other whilst maintaining independence and without diminishing their unique presence in the Community Development Finance sector.

The CDFA in close consultation with SEEDA, has worked with IFcic to set out the constitution for Directors and Members to ensure that IFcic meets the following criteria:

  1. All Directors and Members have a democratically controllable strategic decision-making management process and operational governing control
  2. There is minimal and controllable cost overhead
  3. There is open accountability and security of funds and assets

After initial research on legal and governing structures a meeting with the Community Investment Company Regulator established that the new IFcic organisation and its stakeholders would be best served by the formation of a Community Interest Company which is a newly emerging class of limited company designed to operate for the benefit of a community rather than for the benefit of the company owners. This helps to ensure low cost operation for member CDFIs, the CDFA, SEEDA and other government and award or grant making organisations.

IFcic is limited by guarantee and has the ability to grow to a large membership if required. It has a statutory CIC regulated ‘asset lock’ to ensure the assets and profits are retained within IFcic for community purposes. Assets are only transferable to other asset-locked organisations, such as another CIC, a charity or an associated CDFI organisation operating on a not-for-profit basis for the good of the CDFI community.