Archbishop investigates church’s payday loan links
Anglican leader ‘irritated’ to learn of investment
LONDON The relationship between Christianity and capitalism is complicated, the archbishop of Canterbury said Friday, admitting he was embarrassed by revelations that the Church of England indirectly invested in a payday loan firm he had pledged to put out of business.
Archbishop Justin Welby, leader of the world’s 80 million Anglicans, told the BBC he would urgently review the church’s investment after a report by the Financial Times that the church’s pension fund had invested in Accel Partners, an American venture capital firm that led the 2009 fundraising for payday lender Wonga.
“I was irritated,” he said of learning about the investment. “But these things happen.”
The amount of church money indirectly invested in Wonga was 75,000 pounds ($115,000), out of investments totalling 5.2 billion pounds. But the revelation is still awkward for Welby, who told Total Politics magazine earlier this week that he was ready to compete with payday lenders in hopes of putting them out of business.
He claims the firms, which offer small, short-term loans at sky-high interest rates, prey on the most vulnerable in society.
He said even his own staff had fallen for the promises of such lenders.
“I’ve seen it,” Welby told the BBC. “I’ve lived in these areas and worked in them. I’ve had staff who have got caught up in it and have had to be helped and had their lives destroyed by it. This is something that really matters to me.”
Wonga — whose name is a slang term for money — has used aggressive advertising and sports sponsorships to become one of Britain’s bestknown payday lenders, and one of the most controversial.
Wonga has an annual interest rate of 5,853 per cent, according to its website — but Welby said loan sharks are an even greater problem.
However, the former oil company executive said he remains committed to having the church develop plans to help expand credit unions — member-owned financial cooperatives — as an alternative to the lenders.
The church’s investment guidelines say it should not invest in firms that make more than 25 per cent of their income from industries such as gambling, alcohol or highinterest-rate loans, more than 10 per cent from the military or more than three per cent from pornography.
Welby said he was not embarrassed by the church engaging in capitalist activities, though he acknowledged that it raised complex ethical issues.
“We can’t say that we tolerate bad things, but we have got to live in the real world, and living in the real world means that life is often very complicated and you can’t escape the complexity.”