Rooted Finance is dedicated to tackling financial inequality by addressing discriminatory practices in the financial sector and supporting people through debt challenges, and empowering communities to create long-term financial wellbeing.
This video was created and shown at our parliamentary launch event earlier this year. It explains the project and features our Lived Experience Steering Committee members talking about their personal experiences and why the project is so important.
Rooted Finance was established in 2022, evolving from the Money Matters community project and Fair Money Advice, to provide dedicated, independent support while also addressing wider issues of equality, diversity, and inclusion in finance. As well as providing a safe, non-judgemental space for people to talk about money problems and fix root causes, Rooted Finance campaigns for fairer systems and challenges inequality, working at both local and national levels to ensure financial justice for all.
They lead the Equity in Finance project (initially called Financial Empowerment Alliance but renamed by its Lived experience steering committee), is a UK campaign co-produced with people who are part of the global majority who have direct experience of financial challenges, seeking to expose and dismantle the ‘ethnicity premium' — by identifying and addressing systemic, cultural, and structural barriers to financial access. At the core of the ‘ethnicity premium’ is the direct and indirect extra costs for financial goods and services paid by individuals from global majority heritage.
Connection to Esmée’s strategy
- Priorities:
- Long-term outcomes:
- Harm caused by racial injustice in systems, policy and practice is reduced
From Heather Salmon, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation:
Rooted Finance is an strong example of an organisation working towards our long-term outcome, 'Harm caused by racial injustice in systems, policy and practice is reduced', which is part of our Racial Justice priority. They work towards legislation, policy and practical change across the financial sector, centring the voices and experiences of the communities impacted by unfair financial practices aimed at Global Majority communities (the 'ethnicity premium'). They speak truth to power, and enable others to do the same, holding decision makers to account and influencing change. All of their work at the national level is rooted in 'lived experience', ensuring that people can have a direct impact on changing the systems that harm their lives.
From Rooted Finance:
Esmée Fairbairn Foundation's funding commitment has been instrumental in allowing Rooted Finance to establish the Equity in Finance project. Through years of experience providing frontline debt advice services has given us an irrefutable understanding of the systemic barriers and the 'ethnicity premium' that perpetuate the disproportionate financial exclusion of diverse ethnic communities. The project enables us to translate this frontline knowledge into strategic, systemic action. By integrating the powerful lived experiences of individuals who share their deep insight, we are positioned to drive policy and practice change that will deliver measurable progress toward racial and financial justice for these communities.
