The Personal Finance Research Centre at the University of Bristol has undertaken a review of evaluations of financial capability strategies on behalf of the Financial Services Authority (FSA). The FSA leads the National Strategy for Financial Capability and this review is designed specifically to further inform that strategy. The National Strategy targets: • school children, • young people who are Not in Education, Employment or Training (NEET); • students in universities and Further Education (FE) colleges; • employees in their workplace; • and new parents. It also provides straightforward information through the Moneymadeclear consumer website and publications, and reaches a wide range of consumers via Partnership Development initiatives with not-for-profit organisations. The review was designed to meet two objectives: 1) To describe the extent to which the empirical literature identifies any incremental impact of financial capability interventions on people's behaviour and attitudes: • paying particular attention to the evidence about the effectiveness of different delivery methods of financial education and the impact on key target groups; and • highlighting which aspect(s) of financial capability are being delivered by the various schemes wherever possible. 2) To create a set of plausible estimates of the proportion of people likely to respond to types of financial capability initiatives by making changes in their behaviour, and the extent of any changes they make to their personal finances. Unfortunately, we have found insufficient robust evidence to meet the second objective. We therefore identify what we believe are the key components of a robust evaluation of a financial capability strategy, and explain our reasons for being cautious about generalising from the findings of the existing literature.

The very poorest people in the UK are paying thousands of pounds to legal loans sharks who charge them over the odds for sommething that most of us can easily access at the bank: credit. This report calls for immediate Government action to curb high-cost predatory lending.

In the run to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, latest research from EIRIS focuses on 300 of the world's largest companies (listed on the FTSE All World Index), to examine the progress they have made over the last 12 months in responding th the challenges of climate change. Main conclusion is that some improvements have been made, but further momentum is needed. Investors are invited to integrate climate change into their engagement strategies or when exercising voting rights.

In this report, we investigate how asset building organisations in Europe cope with the outfall of the financial crisis in their country and abroad. We highlight the experiences of 11 organisations and emphasise the need for Governments (be they local, regional or national) to safeguard the achievements made by asset building organisations. Asset building can be seen as a counter-cyclical move to insulate poorer households against external crises, be they personal or macroeconomic in nature. It is all the more important therefore that we now ensure that existing assets are not eroded, through, for example, breaking the link between entitlement to benefits and levels of personal savings. However, if Governments - and funders - do not act now to preserve and increase these asset-building efforts, assets could be eroded and some of the positive impact undone. The current economic crisis starkly reveals that in many countries, the efforts made around asset building did not have enough time to create sufficient resilience before the crisis began. The findings suggest that the crisis could represent an opportunity to mainstream asset building into policy and practice. The report makes recommendations for funders, governments and organisations that will help asset building to become part of mainstream national poverty alleviation strategies It is an updated version of the report presented at the Levi Strauss Workshop on asset building during the European Microfinance Network conference in Milan on June the 5th. Hard copies of the first version of the report can be mailed on request.