Approximately £3.4mn has been invested in charities and social enterprises via Social Investment Tax Relief (SITR), a new report published by NPC for Big Society Capital has revealed.
SITR has been on offer since April 2014 and allows individual investors 30% tax relief on loans or equity investment made into social enterprises and charities.
IFA firms, such as Paradigm Norton, UBS, Ethical Futures and Page Russell, have played their part by helping their socially-minded clients to invest and benefit from SITR either directly or through a fund.
Types of funds
There have been 30 deals made to date[1] totalling £3.4mn. Ten[2] of these deals have been via two fund investments totalling nearly £1mn –
Pioneering role of IFAs
IFAs were instrumental in helping capital being funnelled towards these funds as you can see below: –
Types of Social Enterprises
The size of the investments by the fund were between £25,000 and £250,000 and went into enterprises such as:
Advising on SITR
For IFAs whose clients are socially-minded, SITR can be instrumental. Richard Child from Paradigm Norton told NPC: “SITR is an excellent development. It brings credibility to the social investment sector.”
It, therefore, has the potential to be a key motivator for investors and, as a result, a possible source of leverage for IFAs.
To hear from a real IFA on his experience when advising on SITR please click here.
[1] As of July 2016
[2] 12 deals were completed through direct investment and 8 deals conducted by Triple Point were excluded from the NPC report and therefore will not be discussed here.