Accessing Mainstream Finance

Investigating the scale of the UK bank investment and lending to social sector organisations

Accessing Mainstream Finance is an initiative created by Flip Finance that seeks to better understand the availability of mainstream finance for social organisations and catalyse further opportunities. It is aimed at social enterprises and charities seeking finance, banks who want to serve the social sector better. It is needed because mainstream finance has the systems and scale to offer products and services that social investment, as it currently stands, cannot.

The story so far

‘Social investment’ continues to attract significant, and arguably disproportionate, rhetoric, policy focus, financial support and media coverage. Yet social investment is understood too inconsistently, narrowly and inaccurately.

Flip team members David Floyd and Dan Gregory used a ‘big data’ approach to establish more accurately the extent of bank lending to the social sector in 2015/16. They worked to give social organisations (including social enterprises and charities), policymakers, social investment experts and banks themselves a clearer picture of the role of banks in financing the UK’s social economy. They concluded in a report for RBS – “Forest for the Trees: UK banks’ investment in a social purpose” (July 2016) – that total bank lending to social sector organisations could be around £3 billion.

Next steps

We hope investigation into a too long forgotten area of activity data can provide greater clarity on the contribution which mainstream banks make to meeting demand for finance in the social sector. We would like to see other banks publishing their data, and we would like to work further with banks and social organisations to help them do more to engage with each other about the relevance of ‘normal’ financial products and services.

Forest For The Trees in the press

Do Britain’s banks have a social conscience? New RBS report says yes

Do Britain’s banks have a social conscience? Well a new report suggests they do. Data provided by RBS and analysed by the social research {...}

Report challenges social investment specialists to be clearer

A report by David Floyd and Dan Gregory (for RBS) – ‘The Forest for the Trees’ – estimates that mainstream banks have around £3bn {...}

Need money for your social venture? Try the banks…

A new report for RBS written by social investment and social enterprise commentators Dan Gregory and David Floyd has found that social investment by {...}

New report should prompt major re-evaluation of social investment

Last week saw a report issued by Social Spider’s on social investment “The Forest for the Trees”. Do banks understand charities? One of the {...}

Report: UK banks are lending £3bn to social organisations

A report commissioned by RBS has estimated that banks in the UK have over £3bn invested in outstanding lending to social organisations, and that {...}