UKBAA Annual Review 2016

Foreword

2015-16 has been another exciting year for UKBAA, as we continue to grow our membership base with over 152 member organisations, plus a growing group of individual investor members – reflecting an increasing interest in being part of the trade body from a wide cross section of organisations involved in the angel and early stage investment ecosystem.

We have also significantly increased our industry reach, now working with over 60 Industry partner organisations, as well as reaching over 35,000 industry contacts. During this past year we have continued to focus on further building and connecting the Angel ecosystem. Our work has once again included the organisation of 4 major flagship industry events, enabling our members to come together to share insights and experience and hear from leading experts on latest trends and developments in the market.

We remain keen to build the Angel market around the regions and have been pleased to partner with key players to organise a wide range of regional and sector specific events. We recognise the importance of increasing our members’ access to quality deal flow and have launched in December last year our new UKBAA DealShare Platform in partnership with JustInvesting to enable our members to find, refer, build and close deals. At the same time we have been delighted to support access to investor showcase events available to our members across the country.

UKBAA has an important role to play in building quality standards for Angel Investing across the UK and this has included the organisation of a number of skills workshops for new and less experienced investors this past year. We are also delighted to announce the roll-out in the year ahead of our new nationally accredited angel investing qualification and e-learning programme, working with leading experts and institutions.

As the trade body, we act as the voice of the angel investment community and we have kept our members informed of industry developments and policy changes at both UK and European level, as well as responding to all relevant Government consultations on behalf of our community. We are continuing to lobby to maintain a supportive fiscal and technical environment for angel investing on behalf of our members, also working alongside our fellow trade bodies.

We recognise the importance of access to market intelligence and data and have provided fortnightly updates through our newsletters of deals and developments across the market. We have connected our members to over 50 industry reports and data analyses, as well as contributing to relevant studies over the past year. I hope you will enjoy the following review of our activities and our plans for the coming year. I should like to thank our Chair Simon Calver, our Executive Board, and our sponsors and partners for their support in the past year. We look forward to continuing to grow our community in the year ahead.

Best regards,

Jenny Tooth OBE

Chief Executive UK Business Angels Association