Built to move money into nature.
Why we exist
Nature is the infrastructure the economy stands on: rivers that hold floods, wetlands that clean water, hedgerows that hold the soil, soils that grow food, woodlands that store carbon. Water companies, councils, developers and businesses now pay for that work, but it costs money up front and pays back over years, and banks rarely lend against income they have not seen before. So the projects that would do most for a region are delayed, scaled down or never started. We lend so they can go ahead now.
How the company is built
Regenerative Finance is a community interest company, a legal form with an asset lock: its assets can only be used for the benefit of the community, dividends are capped by law, and if it were wound up its remaining assets would go to another asset-locked body, never to its owners. It is run under a services agreement by The Impact Factory, on commercial terms disclosed in our annual report.
How the money works
Investors put money in for five years and claim tax relief worth 5% of it each year, an effective annual return of 6.2% to 9.1% depending on their tax rate. The British Business Bank is expected to back our loans under the Growth Guarantee Scheme, covering 70% of any loss if a loan does not repay. We lend against what the project will earn, and the interest is designed to pay investors a commercial return. Investors' capital is at risk.
The guarantee under the British Business Bank’s Growth Guarantee Scheme is yet to be finalised and confirmed, and is subject to change.
Who runs it day to day
The Impact Factory is an impact investment advisory that structures and manages place-based investment for local authorities, combined authorities and funds.
Partners
We work with local nature partnerships, environmental trusts, farmer clusters, river partnerships, councils and combined authorities to find projects, confirm what they deliver, and turn regional nature strategies into work on the ground.
What we will report
Each year we will publish an impact report, available to anyone, showing what the money has done for nature. Every project sets out what it expects to deliver before we lend, we track it during the loan, and we confirm it at the end with the local partners.
- Hectares restored
- Kilometres of river, hedgerow and woodland edge
- Tonnes of carbon the projects are contracted to store
- Flood water held and water quality improved, where it can be measured
- Farms, clusters and communities backed
- Jobs in restoration and land management the loans supported
- Repair and insurance costs avoided by the businesses and communities nature protects
- Pounds lent and repaid
- Where the money went, county by county