Investing in goodness

Bruce Davis, the founder of the peer-to-peer investment company Abundance and the former founder of Zopa, visited the Teamspirit offices this week to talk about his company and the exciting sector it’s in.

Abundance is a peer-to-peer lender with a difference. As well as offering bank-beating rates, you can invest in projects that offer social and environmental benefits. One of things that strikes you about the Abundance website is its beautiful and dynamic illustrative style. However, it goes deeper than that. For example, the project page for a 500kW wind turbine in Aberdeenshire shows an accurate illustration of the wind turbine, the current weather conditions, and if the wind turbine is actually turning!

Bruce explained that Abundance makes investing in such projects much more accessible. Whereas a few years ago when investing in renewable energy could involve a minimum of £5,000 to get started, Abundance now enables people to invest in environmentally friendly projects at just a fraction of the cost.

He spoke of how crowdfunding is now starting to come out of its teenage years, expanding to new areas around the world from Argentina to Germany, and that the differences between the different crowdfunders are now cultural.

He debunked the notion of ‘risk-free returns’ and posed the question of “what is your money doing right now?”

It made me think of my own savings earning nominal amounts of interest in my bank account. Perhaps it’s time I thought about what Abundance could do for my money…