CITR: how you can do well by doing good

Ignore corporate virtue-signalling. The CITR is a more practical and tax-efficient way for investors with a social conscience to help struggling communities, says David Stevenson.

Child standing on a wall © Getty Images

The CITR should help boost investment in deprived areas
(Image credit: Child standing on a wall © Getty Images)

I'm deeply cynical about corporate virtue-signalling, whereby big companies chase good environmental, social and governance (ESG) ratings in order to appear to be doing the "right" thing. Investing where you have a direct impact on a social need strikes me as much more interesting. It is often done by so-called third-way institutions: mutuals, community enterprises and socially-minded corporations, for instance. In this category we've seen the emergence of several new institutions, many of them banks, which have tried to develop new products that should appeal to investors with a social conscience.

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David C. Stevenson
Contributor

David Stevenson has been writing the Financial Times Adventurous Investor column for nearly 15 years and is also a regular columnist for Citywire. He writes his own widely read Adventurous Investor SubStack newsletter at davidstevenson.substack.com

David has also had a successful career as a media entrepreneur setting up the big European fintech news and event outfit www.altfi.com as well as www.etfstream.com in the asset management space. 

Before that, he was a founding partner in the Rocket Science Group, a successful corporate comms business. 

David has also written a number of books on investing, funds, ETFs, and stock picking and is currently a non-executive director on a number of stockmarket-listed funds including Gresham House Energy Storage and the Aurora Investment Trust. 

In what remains of his spare time he is a presiding justice on the Southampton magistrates bench.