15 minutes with… Piers Williamson

How busy have you been of late? The number of borrowers through Blend seems to be on the rise.

We’re at 21 now, and we’ve got the 22nd going through at the moment. We’ve got a pipeline of six or seven names behind that, too. The pace has just been remarkable – there is a deal about every six weeks to a month. I think you sort of build momentum, and through Blend we’ve created a vehicle that we can just keep dipping into the market.

We were going at this pace when we had the Affordable Homes Guarantee Scheme, because it was the cheapest product in the market by a long way.

However, if you’re going back five, six years, before that scheme, we would probably be issuing two to three times a year at most.

ESG seems to be huge in the sector at the moment. When and why did that happen?

We were talking about it in our results in 2020, but we felt it was still a growth trend then. It’s really the last 12 months where it has taken off like an express train.

I’ve been heavily involved with the Sustainability Reporting Standard for Social Housing, so I may be biased because I’m immersed in it. But it’s rare not to have a conversation with anyone about it now. We’ve got one of our team doing an ESG diploma, so we have qualifications in this.

You’ve also got initiatives like Moral Money at the Financial Times pushing the ESG thing. If you listen to those in the Bank of England, there is a keen focus. It is really being pushed from the centre of the financial system.

Are you starting to see new investors coming into the market as a result of ESG?

So, I think we have seen that less. When we got social bond status for our Blend programme, we saw an increased focus, particularly in investors where ESG is the hot button. However, on the whole, they were already investing in us.

I think the different investors tend to be European ESG funds, and they tend to lend in probably under 15-year maturities.

These shorter, sustainable bonds, they will have seen these different investors. But what we’ve all seen is an increased competition to buy these bonds. It’s not unusual for us to oversubscribe a bond by four times.

We did a deal recently that was oversubscribed by two times. In the middle of August, that is rare.

What do you think the key things the world of social housing finance should be looking out for this year?

The early adopters in the Sustainability Reporting Standard for Social Housing will be coming out with their own sustainability reports in September.

There are nearly 60 associations and I think that is a huge stepping stone for the sector, with all the associations reporting on a common basis.

COP26 [UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow] in November will be a big political focus. It is early doors for housing associations getting access to the government’s decarbonisation funds but if as a whole they can
say to investors, “Look at the fantastic stuff we are doing and we are reporting this on a common basis already,” it can become a movement.

There is also the Spending Review coming up and it is very important from a sustainable investment point of view that the core cash flows are protected.

We’ve got a rent supplement, until 2024, of Consumer Price Index plus 1%. The sector is currently borrowing £115bn – that’s an awful lot of money. So, the Spending Review will be important, and it is important there is some certainty behind the core rent receivable.

We were locked down for ages. What is the thing you’ve enjoyed most about coming out of lockdown?

First of all, it’s just great being with and talking to people – you forget how much you miss that; your family, your friends, just doing that again has been fantastic.

I also play bass in a couple of bands. We play weddings, bar mitzvahs and funerals. We mainly play old fashioned R&B and we’ve been doing it for a long time.

I suppose we are too good to give it up [said tongue in cheek]. That sounds a bit arrogant, doesn’t it?