A TRANSPARENT NEW WORLD FOR EIS Kuber Ventures is hoping to lead a revolution of transparency in EIS via its platform
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uber Ventures is trying to eradicate the legacy of secrecy surrounding venture capital and make EIS more transparent and accessible.
Dermot Campbell, Chief Executive of Kuber Ventures, wants advisers to understand the world of EIS, SEIS and Business Relief (BR). Since 2013, he has been trying to educate and provide access to alternative investments through the Kuber platform, dedicate to these funds - it currently offers advisers the choice of 25 funds. It hasn’t been an easy job. Campbell says EIS gained a bad reputation, being thrown in the same category as film investments that HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) was not keen on. He said once HMRC clamped down on ‘dodgy film’ investments, tax advisers funnelled money into EIS. Naturally, Campbell says some people will think EIS is ‘playing into that [tax avoidance] world’. And some of the funds available were not doing the industry’s reputation any favours. ‘Some of these products had massively high margins and big sales forces selling them,’ says Campbell. ‘That bit of the industry did not want platforms [like Kuber].’
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GB Investment Magazine · June 2019
He says the transparency that a platform brings would have shone a spotlight on the funds charging too much and delivering too little, but times have changed and now there is a push towards greater transparency and there ‘are some great funds appearing’. ‘We are trying to drive good behaviour and transparency but some [fund providers] cannot help themselves,’ he says. ‘It came from their heritage...operating in a secretive world where they are not used to sharing their toys and handling a lot of intellectual property that they do not want to be looked at. They have this natural thing where they want to be secretive because they are dealing with cutting-edge, disruptive information, and they do have those processes in place that protect that intellectual property.’ Why Campbell understands that funds need to be somewhat secretive about the companies they invest in and the specifics of their operations, he believes there is one area that should not be secret: charges. Campbell is clear about two things: firstly, EIS providers should make their charges clear, and secondly, it is not Kuber’s place to judge what fees should be. ‘Our job is not to say what is fair and what is reasonable with charges,’ he says, adding that pricing both too high and too low brings about their own issues.
