Schroders raises £75m for social impact investment trust
Just reaches minimum target
David Brenchley, Investment Week, 17 December 2020
Schroders has raised £75m for its social impact investment trust run by Big Society Capital (BSC), just hitting its minimum size but taking investment company primary fundraising up to £921m for 2020.
The Schroder BSC Social Impact Trust said it would use part of the £75m raised to acquire seven assets from BSC, with the rest to be invested in accordance with the company’s investment policy and/or used for working capital purposes.
The company said it will invest in social impact investments that seek to tackle the significant increase in homelessness, provide support for people with learning disabilities, provide housing for survivors of domestic abuse, and enable improved access to quality care services for physical and mental health conditions.
BSC CIO Jeremy Rogers said he had been “encouraged by the growing interest of pioneer investors to directly address social challenges through their investments”.
Rogers had previously told investors at a QuotedData webinar that the modest £100m target for the initial issue had been dictated by the immediate pipeline of investments the company identified. “We have a path to investing this money pretty quickly and our goal is to do a really good job for the first set of investors and then build from there,” Rogers said.
Schroders and BSC had said when it announced the IPO it hoped the company would grow to between £300m and £500m within five years. Rogers said scaling the trust had to be done “at the right pace because ultimately if you try to scale organisations too quickly that can have [a negative] impact”.
“When you look at the amount [BSC has] invested over the last eight years through our other funds, there is definitely the possibility that this could grow quicker,” he continued.
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