Social investors face a “growing resentment” from front-line charities who think they are not in touch with the sector's needs, the chief executive of one of the country's largest social lenders said this week.

Jonathan Jenkins, chief executive of the Social Investment Business, which runs several social investment and grant funds for charities, told Civil Society News that many people working in charities feel disconnected from social investors.

“There is a real feeling that the social investment community isn’t listening to the people on the front line,” he said. “There’s a growing resentment, and a feeling that the social investment world is a London thing, with London-based intermediaries.

“There’s a feeling it’s a lot of people in London with clever ideas who are talking to each other.”

He said that social finance served an extremely useful purpose, particularly among organisations who were looking to deliver contracts, but that most people wanted “simple loan products they understand”.

“We’re attempting to address that issue,” he said. “We’re attempting to produce simple funds to make loans. We want to make social finance as simple as possible.”

Jenkins said that there was also a frustration at how slowly money had flowed to front-line organisations, particularly from Big Society Capital, but that the social wholesaler needed another year to work.

“The next annual review will be the important one,” he said. “That’s when we’ll know if it’s working. It takes a long time to set all of this up and get the money out to the people who need it.”