Insuring our future revenues
Highlands Rewilding leads a ground-breaking step forward in our nascent market
In London yesterday one of the largest underwriting agencies in the world, DUAL group, launched something completely new. In a world where it is increasingly said that “if it isn’t insurable it isn’t going to be investable,” they announced the first insurance product to support biodiversity net gain. It is with Highlands Rewilding, and covers future natural-capital revenues from the two estates we manage at Bunloit.
This is a ground-breaking first in the UK, and one that we and our insurers very much hope will contribute materially to the making of the market.
Our founder Jeremy Leggett, Highlands Rewilding CEO, said: “As well as monetising our own natural capital, Highlands Rewilding seeks a leadership role in helping to make natural capital a trustable investable asset class for our entire embryonic industry. We are confident that this first insurance policy will break new ground in helping us do that. The premiums we will pay will of course reduce the returns for our investors, but they will increase the real value of our offering by more than we pay out, in terms of the confidence it will bring to our buyers, the landowner partners with whom we share profits, and the local communities to whom we bring added prosperity in multiple ways."
Further details can be found in this DUAL press release.
Meanwhile, in other good news, this week we completed our pivot to an asset-light land-management-partnership model with the sale of our last building. That amounts to 18 homes all of which have been sold either to local community members, tenants buying their homes, people returning to their original community, or rewilding supporters. In a nation with a rural housing emergency, that is a big contribution to community prosperity: a key element of our reason for existing. As for the land we have sold, 83% of it has gone to buyers who are partnered with us in land management for nature recovery and win-win natural-capital monetisation. You can well imagine how pleased we are about that.
The last sale has allowed us to fully repay the risky loans we took out in order to acquire the Tayvallich estate, with its multiple habitats so unique for purpose. (We will begin work with DUAL on insuring the future revenues for the more ecologically complex Tayvallich ground in short order). We could not have fought our way to the position we are in today had we not taken that risk, and we would like to thank everyone who has helped us make our conscious risk-taking pay off. We especially thank the investors who signed off on us taking the risk.
Finally, progress is good in our current fundraising round. Against our target of £1.5 million we have £947,000 in or committed, and due diligence underway that should allow us to hit the target. We will go over the target if we have to, including making space for those of our existing investors who want to top up to do so. That will involve a fair amount of admin, so it is probable that will extend into January. We will close the round as soon as we can in the first quarter of the 2026, once we are sure we are not disappointing anyone.