Socially Responsible Investing With Alpha Real Capital

Alpha Real Capital provides market leading and innovative real asset investment solutions across a range of strategies including commercial ground rents, UK renewable infrastructure, social real estate and secured lending.

Given the long-term nature of the assets it invests into, sustainable investing is at the core of Alpha’s work, with ESG considerations embedded within investment and ongoing monitoring processes. Looking to enhance how and what it reported back to investors, Alpha approached us in 2019 to assess and quantify the social value delivered by its existing and targeted investments.

One key area of work has been quantifying the social value delivered by the Social Long Income Fund, which invests in real estate assets with the dual function of delivering long-term, resilient, inflation-linked income streams, while also providing societal benefits and impacts and assisting in building stronger, better communities.

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How did Loop help?

Pension schemes have a duty to report back on the benefits generated as part of their compliance regulations. Being able to quantify the social value derived from investments gives real value to Alpha’s conversations with existing investors, allowing it to convey the societal benefits their investments will deliver, in addition to the more traditional financial returns. In turn, Alpha’s investors are able to convey these messages to their underlying members, evidencing their commitment to the increasingly popular responsible and sustainable investment themes.

It also provides extra credibility to Alpha’s approach and the depth of their understanding of the markets they invest into when speaking with potential investors, highlighting that the business is quantifying its actions and backing this up with compliant data from an external party. Crucially, gaining a greater understanding of key sectors and what investment in those areas generates is helping Alpha to unlock greater value with flexibility where it is needed.

Overall, our meticulous and conscious approach to research and calculation works closely with Alpha’s approach to good governance and financial accountability. This solidifies the company’s commitment to delivering sustainable investment returns in a way that delivers positive environmental, social and economic benefits, with the metrics captured forming part of the business’s overall due diligence processes.

We knew that by investing in social real estate we were delivering a positive impact, but we wanted to look beyond counting bedspaces or patients and see how we could quantify what our investments deliver in real terms. This commitment to looking beyond the financial returns required third-party expertise and external validation and this is the reason we approached Loop.

We’ve since been working closely with the team on quantifying the social value SLIF delivers – and are expanding this to our other strategies. The more benefits we are able to evidence in our activities and investments, the more we can use that positive message to encourage more long-term patient capital to invest in social real estate. The Loop results form a key element in our communication with existing and potential investors, allowing us to give our clients confidence in the multiplier effects that investments into social real estate assets can deliver.

Adrian D’Enrico
Head of Social Real Estate, Alpha Real Capital