Advisory Group

The Centre for Responsible Credit is assisted in its work by an Advisory Group composed of leading academics and consumer advocates drawn from both within the UK and internationally.

Professor Udo Reifner

Udo is Professor of Commercial Law at Hamburg University and Director of the independent Institute for Financial Services e.V. His research specialisms are credit and insolvency law. In 2004 he was chairman of the FIN-USE expert forum of the EU Commission DG Internal Market. He was also a member of the Advisory Committee of Scientific Research of the University of Trento, Italy for three years. From 2005 onwards he has co-ordinated the European Coalition for Responsible Credit. He has published extensively on a wide range of financial services issues, commercial law, financial education, the history of law and social banking.

Professor Iain Ramsay

Iain is Professor of Law at Kent Law School, University of Kent. From 1986-2007 he was a Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Toronto, Canada. His primary areas of research are regulation of consumer markets and consumption relations at the national and international level and consumer bankruptcy. He is an internationally recognized scholar in these areas and from 2003-2007 was President of the International Association of Consumer Law. He has written many articles on consumer law and bankruptcy including several empirical studies of consumer bankruptcy, consumer redress and small claims courts. Iain has also acted as a consultant on consumer law and policy to governments and NGOs in Canada, Europe and South America. He was a member of the Canadian Federal Task Force on Personal Insolvency (2000-2002) and is an elected member of the American Law Institute.

Professor Toni Williams

Toni has been a faculty member at University College London and Osgoode Hall Law School of York University, Canada, and now holds a Chair at Kent Law School in the UK. She has published in a variety of areas, including racial discrimination in criminal justice, critical law and economics and access to financial services for consumers and micro-entrepreneurs from marginalized populations. Her current research projects concern regulation of consumer financial services, financial literacy, microfinance, social and financial exclusion and economic justice.

Professor Saul Schwartz

Saul is a Professor within the School of Public Policy and Administration at Carleton University in Canada. Broadly speaking, Saul's research involves the analysis of policies aimed at helping the poor. Welfare reform has been a consistent interest over the years, highlighted by his long-standing involvement with the experimental analysis of the Canadian Self-Sufficiency Project (SSP), a demonstration project that subsidized work by long-term welfare recipients. His work with Jennifer Stewart on the duration of low-wage work is in this line of research. Efforts to increase post-secondary access to education are also another major analytic focus. While these involve the econometric analysis of survey data, Professor Schwartz's work on personal bankruptcy and credit counselling with Stephanie Ben-Ishai of the Osgoode Hall Law School is almost entirely qualitative and relies on interviews of government officials, interviews with low-income debtors and analyses of the current legal environment. Another area of on-going research deals with financial regulation as an alternative to financial education.

Dave Simmonds, OBE

Dave is the co-founder and Chief Executive of the Centre for Economic and Social Inclusion. He has been involved in social exclusion, labour market and regeneration policy for the past 23 years and is one of the UK's leading commentators on welfare-to-work issues. Dave has been a special adviser to the House of Commons Work and Pensions Select Committee and a Beacon Council specialist panel member, and he currently advises on the OECD Local Economic Employment and Development programme.

Toby Blume

Toby is the Chief Executive of the Urban Forum and leads on their policy work and government relations. He serves on a number of advisory bodies concerning local strategic parnerships, community empowerment, and community sector investment. Toby joined Urban Forum in 2004, having previously set up Groundswell, a charity helping homeless people to run community projects throughout the UK. He is a member of the Beacon Awards Advisory Panel and a trustee of the Travellers Aid Trust, a grant-making charity supporting Gypsies and Travellers.