13/14 November 2008 - New Connaught Rooms, London

The Conference will bring together over 350 delegates from around the globe to jointly debate the principles for future responsible credit provision. Delegates will be drawn from consumer, financial services industry, regulatory, and policy networks and speakers will be nationally, and often internationally, renowned experts in their fields. The Conference will proceed on the basis of open and constructive dialogue across all four networks and will provide an essential arena for concerns, proposed responses, and actions to be explained, shared, and understood.

Delegates will include representatives from the credit industry (both consumer and mortgage sectors), the consumer and NGO sector and from regulatory and academic networks.

The conference will be of particular interest to members of the credit industry involved in the development of Corporate Social Responsibility policies and/or with a responsibility for lending policy as it represents a major opportunity to extend stakeholder networks and to hear first hand from key regulators and government concerning future developments.

The conference also provides considerable scope for consumer agencies and NGO’s to highlight their experiences and concerns with regulators and the industry and to make links with other organisations involved in campaigning for responsible credit services at the UK, European, and International levels. The conference will therefore be useful for those from the NGO sector with both policy and practitioner roles, including debt advice agencies, credit unions, community development finance institutions, and those working in the field of financial education.

Finally, the conference will feature contributions from leading academics working in the fields of financial education, inclusion, insolvency, and over-indebtedness. The conference will therefore be particularly attractive to think tanks and policy institutes with an interest in financial services provision, and to researchers working in academia or for political parties and public representatives.

Confirmed Speakers

Kitty Ussher MP, Economic Secretary to the Treasury, UK

Martin Wolf, CBE, Associate Editor & Chief Economics Commentator, Financial Times

Paul Lewis, BBC Radio 4, Moneybox presenter

Ray Watson, Director, Consumer Credit, Office of Fair Trading, UK

John Taylor, Chief Executive Officer, National Community Reinvestment Coalition, U.S.A

Eric Leenders, Executive Director, Retail, British Bankers Association

Lindsay Tucker, Director, International Community Relations, Citi

Bill Knight, Chair, International Forum on Financial Consumer Protection and Education

Peter Setou, National Credit Regulator, South Africa

Professor Udo Reifner, European Coalition for Responsible Credit

Professor Iain Ramsay, University of Kent, UK

Professor Toni Williams, University of Kent, UK

Saya Oyama, Associate Professor, Kinjo Gakuin University, Japan

Adam Land, Director of Remedies and Business Analysis Competition Commission, UK

Martin Merlin, Head of Financial Services Policy, DG Market, EU Commission

Hans Grohs, Chair, European Consumer Debt Network,

Bob Schmitz, Union Luxembourgeoise des Consommateurs

Benoit Granger, McFin, France

Nigel Cates, Deputy Director, Consumer Credit, Office of Fair Trading

Anja Peltonen, Kuluttajavirasto Konsumentverket Consumer Agency, Finland

Paul Joyce, Free Legal Advice Centres, Ireland

Michael Coogan, Council of Mortgage Lenders, UK