Gosling's Grouse: Smart investing

GOSLING'S GROUSE

If I said I could offer you an investment that, for the sum of, say, £10,000, could return ten times your money and help improve a million lives, would you be interested?

Do not worry. This is not one of those spam emails from someone who is related to someone who just needs your bank details to unlock millions of pounds held in trust. These investments – some call them social impact investments – are in their simplest terms manifested in charity bonds. You may have seen charity Mencap issuing a bond in the past few weeks which successfully raised £10m to provide social housing. In this case, the return is typical of a low-risk corporate bond – in the region of a 5% coupon and return of capital – and the number of people helped is directly linked to th...