Octopus Ventures Knowledge Intensive EIS Fund investment process

Applying for the Fund

We’ve made it easy to apply online. The minimum subscription amount is £25,000, and your client can invest as much as they like (please bear in mind that the investment limit for EIS income tax relief is £2 million*). We’ll let you know when we’ve received your client’s funds in a welcome email – which will include details of the next steps for their investment.

*Note that the investment limit for EIS income tax relief in a knowledge-intensive fund is £2 million, of which at least £1 million needs to be invested in purely knowledge-intensive companies.

Identifying opportunities for your client’s portfolio

Once the Fund has closed, we’ll move their money into the investment phase. We will invest their money alongside investments from other investors. In order to take advantage of certain investment opportunities for your client’s portfolio, we may need to wait until we have sufficient funds sourced from a number of investors. Once we have accepted their application and received your client’s money, it will not typically be possible for us to return any uninvested cash at their request.

Your client’s money will be invested into EIS-qualifying, knowledge-intensive companies

We will start to invest your client’s money into early-stage businesses, and we expect to invest all their funds into around 10-20 companies over twelve months. However, it could take longer to invest all their money, as we will consistently follow our investment process and won’t compromise on the quality of the investment opportunities we source and manage for them. We’ll let you know once all the funds in their portfolio are fully invested.

Issuing your client’s EIS 5 tax certificates

Your client will need an EIS 5 tax certificate to claim income tax relief (and capital gains deferral relief, if relevant to them). The relevant date for income tax relief is the date that the Fund closes. For capital gains deferral, it is the date the Fund invests into each portfolio company.

The EIS 5 certificate is issued by HMRC and will be available on our online portal once we have completed every investment from the Fund and received certificates for each individual investment from HMRC. This would typically be available six to twelve months after the final investment has been made. Timing cannot be guaranteed.

Selling their investment

When we select a company for your client’s portfolio, we expect to be invested in it for five to ten years. However, exits can happen earlier than expected, or we may choose to remain invested in a company for longer than ten years in order to target a more attractive exit for your client’s portfolio. Your client should expect that the number of companies in their portfolio will change throughout the lifecycle of their investment. When we do sell your client’s investment in each company, we’ll email you both the details and return the proceeds (less any fees) to your client.