We are delighted to announce that Zamo Capital, Europe’s only specialist investor in impact investment firms, has invested in SASC. Zamo Capital provides capital, intensive support, and an established network of investors to help raise new capital and accelerate the growth of impact investment firms like SASC.

The investment will be transformative for SASC. It will enable us to scale our activities quickly, grow our team and our capabilities and accelerate our fundraising for our  award-winning Social and Sustainable Capital Housing (SASH) fund, which we launched in 2019.

In recent months, the social housing sector has shown marked resilience compared to the rest of the property market. However, the Covid-19 pandemic has also greatly increased the already considerable demand for safe, stable, and appropriate housing for the most disadvantaged in our society and our mission is to address this difficult challenge.

SASH provides loans of between £2 to £5 million to small and medium sized charities, who provide accommodation and support to vulnerable people. The loans fund the purchase of safe, stable and appropriate housing for those vulnerable people.

Using a highly innovative structure, SASH generates both commercial returns and significant impact. Finance provided by the fund allows high performing social enterprises with a strong track record in the management of social housing to purchase properties in areas where they have good geographical knowledge and close relationships with the local authorities who are the source of rental income.

In the past year, we have seen tremendous demand from social enterprises and charities for SASH investments and we are pleased that we have almost completed our eighth investment to date.

The innovation of this fund and its ability to deliver deep social impact for vulnerable people and provide a solid risk-adjusted return to investors has been recognised within the sector. In the NatWest SE100 Social Business Awards 2020, SASC won the Social Investment Award for SASH’s work with Hull Women’s Network.

With Zamo’s support, we can now grow the fund. We will accelerate our fundraising to meet our target of £100 million by Autumn 2021. This will allow us to respond to the increased demand for social housing and scale our activities to help more people, more quickly.

Our goal is to provide homes for 10,000 people who are homeless or at risk of becoming so, while generating attractive returns for investors. The social impact will also be significant as the support provided by our investees to their tenants gives disadvantaged individuals the very best chance of breaking the cycle of poverty.

In addition to Zamo’s capital, we will benefit from the firm’s proven and extensive expertise as impact investors, established network, and track-record in scaling impact managers. There are also clear synergies between our teams, and we look forward to working together.

With the support of this investment, we are excited that we will be able to realise our ambitious plans and help many more organisations tackle some of the biggest social issues facing our society today.

You can read the press release here and an interview with Ben and Jim Roth, founder of Zamo Capital, on IPE Real Assets here.

The investment also received coverage in PE News, Impact Alpha, Unquote and Property Funds World.