DBS

51 businesses are large with impeccable accounting systems and governance controls in place, costing a lot of time and money, I do ask myself how are these businesses underwriting for very small loans on very young businesses? Getting asset security is an obvious way to guarantee against downside, and our portfolios are something in the order of 85% or 95% secured, to balance that risk. But this is ultimately why we do what we do, which is diversify across platforms and sectors. Abundance is focusing its energy on finding projects in infrastructure, which we define as something, which is socially useful, ideally sustainable or environmentally positive. Then what we’re looking at for the future is moving into territories like health, education, transport. The asset class that we’ve built our business around has been renewable energy and that has been very positive. And as that industry matures we still see an opportunity there, however we want to give people the opportunity to diversify beyond renewables. So, we’re identifying sectors, which offer that similar blend of financial return and social benefits. Those asset classes are potentially lower risk than renewables because the returns of those investments tend to be based on either government backed or local authority backed revenues which obviously carry a lower degree of risk in terms of pay back. The returns will be lower therefore than what we’re currently experiencing in renewables, where we expect somewhere between 5% and 10% IRR. In infrastructure, those returns are probably more like 3% to 7% or 8%. And the hope is that people will buy into different types of risk from the higher risk structured stuff that we do, at between 10-12%, down to the very low risk perhaps for long terms of up to 30 years’ invested in local community projects schools or hospitals. At Downing we only invest in real things. We believe the British love property and we focus on property-backed and asset-rich businesses, with the strongest demand being for the pubs, care homes and the renewable energy assets. These are tangible things and again, this underlines my earlier point about being simple and transparent: People can understand how a pub makes money and how a solar farm works. It’s not a contract for difference or a derivative, or any other fabricated financial product. We’re stripping the layers out between investors and their money so they can see how it is being put to work. One example would be our recent pub bond. If you invested in that pub bond, you will receive a loyalty card and if you go to one of Oakman’s 18 pubs, you get a 20% discount on your food. So, if that was me, thinking about making the investment, I’d go to one of the pubs and check it out. It’s a nice example of making an investment where, at the end of the day, there are bricks and mortar. A real asset that offers security on your investment. It’s something people may well choose to do locally, especially if it’s a pub that’s near them, in Oxfordshire or Bedfordshire. The key trend for us is that people like investing in real things, and they expect Downing to help them preserve and grow their capital rather than make very speculative investments. We don’t aim to offer double digit returns. If these were higher risk, earlier stage, complex products or businesses, we would put them in our funds. We only offer debt based securities at the point where some of the risks have been reduced and we can put security in place. The investment opportunities that we have brought to investors on our platform since our launch already stand out in their sophistication when compared to similar opportunities on other platforms. Property Crowd, backed by the Global Alternatives business model and infrastructure, has been conceived from the very beginning to operate as a global platform offering cross border deal flow to investors on an international basis. So, do watch this space as the opportunities we shall be bringing to Property Crowd investors will become more and more exciting. Furthermore, Property Crowd is a securities based real estate crowdfunding platform that operates across the debt and equity spectrum, so expect to see mezzanine and equity investment opportunities very soon. The key tenet of Triple Point Advancr’s strategy is funding business critical assets. An illustration that we like to use when talking about it is a walk down today’s modern high street. Most of the shops you come across are increasingly reliant on cashless forms of payments. In fact, last year for the first time ever, debit and contactless transactions overtook all other payment types. At Triple Point, we manage one of the largest leasing programmes for chip and pin machines into over 45,000 different SMEs. These card readers might be individually small in value but have become an absolutely essential tool for modern commerce. The sheer scale of Triple Point’s diversity combined with their mission critical nature mean that they are a proven, simple and secure asset class. Another example ‘down the high street’ is a leasing programme Triple Point run in support of Uber. Previously, financing the private car hire market was difficult but BRUCE DAVIS JULIA GROVES JAKE WOMBWELL-POVEY ROHIN MODASIA MATT TAYLOR JAMES CRANMER LISA BEST