“The City is good at lots of things, but coming together to benefit others isn’t necessarily one of them,” James Penny, chief investment officer at TAM Asset Management, tells Portfolio Adviser. “There aren’t too many sports that spread across the whole of the City: rugby, football, golf – people love it or hate it. They dip in and they dip out.
“Predominantly, I have found cycling to be one of the common languages that is spoken across the industry, whether that’s based on gender or seniority.”
This conversation is taking place exactly one month before TAM’s sixth charity bike ride, an event which brings together members of the financial services industry to raise money for a cohort of charities.
This year, a total of 109 riders will cycle a gruelling 360km trek along the River Danube, from Vienna to Budapest, between the 17 and 20 September. All money raised (costs for participating are covered by the riders themselves) will be donated to Action Medical Research for Children.
See also: Monday Manager Dr David Walsh: ‘Avoid biased self-attribution’
Founded in 1952, Action Medical Research raises vital funds to help children living with cerebral palsy, cancer, rare diseases and other life-limiting conditions.
“This may change in the future, but right now the mission of the TAM Charity Ride is to support children, which is why we’re doing it for Action Medical this year,” Penny explains.
“The TAM Charity Ride is not tethered to one charity permanently. It can move around to support lots of different causes. We want to support charities which are not huge.
“If you raise £100,000 for some of the biggest international charities, then that’s great, the money goes into their pot with everything else. If you raise £100,000 for a charity which only raises £100,000 per year, you have doubled their funding, you have helped them to keep the lights on, and you have raised their profile significantly.”
The history of the TAM Charity Ride
The event began in 2015, with six TAM colleagues and four of their friends cycling from London to Paris, as part of the firm’s ‘You Give, We Give’ initiative. Having raised more than £10,000 for charity, demand to join the next event snowballed.
After a hiatus – which included Covid – the next cycle saw 25 people ride from London Waterloo to Waterloo in Belgium, raising a total of £47,000. The following year, the number of cyclists doubled to 50 and £80,000 was raised.
Each year the race has grown significantly. To date, the TAM Charity Ride has raised more than £327,000 for numerous small charities, including HEART UK, Winston’s Wish, Ruth Strauss Foundation and Elizabeth’s Smile.
Logistics
This year will be the first TAM race which isn’t confined to travel on the Eurostar, which was initially Penny’s transport of choice so that riders could bring their own bikes and equipment.
However, a logistics company will drive everybody’s bikes out to the start line, meaning TAM can now embark on races anywhere across Europe.
To enter, each rider contributes £600 themselves to cover their costs, and are asked to raise a minimum of £1,000 via their fundraising pages.
“A lot of other events won’t charge anything to enter, and they’ll get everyone to fundraise £2,000 pounds each, for example, but they will take £1,000 per head from out of the bucket. I prefer the way that way do it here at TAM, it’s quite clean,” Penny says.
See also: Sage, RELX and Experian boost Nick Train’s FGT performance in July
Another aim for Penny is to make the event as gender-inclusive as possible, with the ultimate goal of ensuring a 50% female participation rate.
Three professional cyclists will be joining the team this year, two of whom are women. They are Dr Sarah Ruggins, the fastest person ever to cycle the continent of Europe; Lizzy Deignan, former world champion, Olympic silver medallist and winner of the Paris-Roubaix Femmes; and Yanto Barker, who was the highest-placed British cyclist in the 2005 Tour of Britain and who founded and owns the international performance brand Le Col.
“Gender equality in the city is cr*p, and it needs to be better,” Penny says. “On our first ride, 15% of riders were women. Now it is at 35% – we have grown it every year and plan to keep doing so. Having two female professional riders on the team is also significant, and there are some incredible women taking part in the ride this year.”
While riders pay to participate, they each receive state-of-the-art, personalised cycling kits, provided by sponsors. This kit, as well as other costs of the event and logistics, are this year supported by sponsors including Portfolio Adviser, Morningstar, Amber River, Fundpath, Capital Group, Robeco, Jupiter and Raymond James, among others.
Philanthropy in the City
“The ride has gained so much traction and is underpinned by so many different financial services companies within the City. It’s funded by the City, for the City. Which is cool, and something I didn’t even envisage,” Penny says.
“I’m not a tour guide or an events planner. I don’t do this just for the fun of it – I have a day job. I do it because the City doesn’t raise enough money for charity and, the way I see it, an initiative underpinned by cycling seems the only way we can bring people together to change lives.”
The CIO says the financial sector is unique in that, unlike other areas of the UK’s economy, “billions of pounds are changing hands every single day”.
“People are making massive commissions, huge annual bonuses, and that’s great. Fair play to them. But if you took one-fifth of a percentage point of people’s commission, you’d probably end rough sleeping overnight.
“Finance could change the entire landscape of this country on its own. People love the idea of it but they don’t want the responsibility, so they just get on with their day jobs. But we can deliver more change overnight than seven or eight other industries combined.
“If all 100 people on this ride can raise £100,000, and that £100,000 saves one child’s life because of what we did…. It means a human being is still going to be here, on this planet, because we organised an event. It is worth it just for that.”
Alongside sponsoring the event, Mark Allen Financial Media’s managing director Matthew Cianfarani will be taking part in the TAM Charity Ride. To help him reach his £1,000 target, please donate here.
