Chartered Accountants Benevolent Association

The Board of Trustees, chaired by Hemant Patel, bears ultimate fiduciary responsibility for the endowment. The Investment Committee, which includes Robert Holl — a Principal at the Wellcome Trust — provides specialist oversight on asset allocation and manager selection across the fund-of-funds portfolio, direct real estate, and the loan book to ICAEW members (per Altss research).

CABA's endowment adopts a hybrid structure combining external fund commitments — including a fund-of-funds strategy and secondaries and special situations exposure — with directly held UK residential property and a bespoke loan book offered to chartered accountants in need. This mix ties investment returns directly to the charity's mission-focused lending and housing support programs.

CABA makes both. It commits capital to external funds via a fund-of-funds approach and participates in secondaries. At the same time, it directly owns and manages a portfolio of residential investment properties and operates a direct beneficiary loan book — making it a rare example of an endowment that acts as a direct credit provider to its members.

CABA is the official occupational charity for members of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW). The President of the ICAEW serves as CABA's Patron, and the charity is the primary provider of welfare and mental health support to the institute's trainees and chartered accountants across the UK.

While CABA does not publicly disclose a specific spending rule, its portfolio architecture — combining illiquid fund commitments with directly held property and an income-generating loan book — signals a strategy designed to generate steady distributable cash flows alongside capital appreciation to match its charitable disbursement requirements.

CABA operates exclusively as a charitable entity; it does not sit atop a family office or spin out grant-making subsidiaries. Its philanthropic mission is executed directly through its own staff and service partners like Kooth and Qwell, who provide counselling and mental health support to the accounting profession.

CABA is a member of the Association of Charitable Organisations, the umbrella body for benevolent funds in the UK, and the National Council for Voluntary Organisations. It also has ties to Chartered Accountants Worldwide as part of the global network of chartered accountancy institutes.