Impact report: over 1,480 loans across the social sector

Our impact reporting is out. Since we began lending, savers' money has funded over 1,480 loans and A$653 million lent to charities, community organisations and social enterprises — a figure that only means anything when you look at what it was spent on.

Social and community housing is the largest share of that lending: providers buying, building and refurbishing homes for people who cannot find them at market rents. Health and care follows, funding aged care facilities, disability services and community health premises. Education, faith organisations, arts venues, sport and recreation, and community and social enterprise make up the rest.

The pattern in the loan book is the pattern of the sector. The majority of the loans we make are modest and go to organisations that would not clear a mainstream bank's threshold — not because they are weak, but because their income is grant-funded, contract-funded or donated, and does not look the way a commercial lender expects income to look.

Impact is not only what was built. We ask borrowers what changed: beds available, places funded, hours of service delivered, buildings kept open that would have closed. Those numbers come from the organisations themselves and they are the part of the report we would defend hardest.

None of it happens without savers. Every dollar lent came from a deposit held with us by a person, a charity, a business or a credit union that decided where their savings should go. Deposits are protected by the Financial Claims Scheme up to A$250,000 per account holder, and in the meantime they are working.

The report also sets out where we fell short: sectors we did not reach, parts of Australia where our lending is thin, and organisations we turned down that we would like to have funded. We publish that alongside the totals because an impact report that only contains good news is marketing.