Impact Investing
One of the most provocative investment themes to emerge from the financial crisis is “Impact Investing.” But what is “Impact Investing”? At the most strategic level, impact investing is based on the idea that philanthropy and government intervention alone cannot solve the primary challenges that the globe faces. Specifically, an Impact Investment seeks financial return as well as measurable environmental, social or governance value (ESG). As the developing world consumes more energy, from where will it come? As populations continue to rise, how will we feed ourselves? If the world has passed peak oil, how will we continue to operate in a globally-interconnected economy? With water becoming an increasingly important and scarce resource, how will we address shortages? Impact investors believe that by harnessing the power of capital and the flexibility of market mechanisms, entrepreneurs, investors and regulators will be given the tools (and the capital) to address these and other challenges at scale. Solutions that would otherwise not have been possible will become economically viable.
There are two broad groups of impact investors: “Financial First” investors who commit capital with a minimum expected financial return, and “Impact First” investors who commit capital with a minimum expected ESG return. We are investors, and as such evaluate impact investing through this lens. The proprietary tools that we developed to build coherent, responsible, conventional portfolios are the same tools we use to build impact portfolios. This allows our clients to develop highly personalized impact themes, and to support those themes with powerful analytics. Most importantly, our relentless focus on liquidity, predictability and quality gives our impact clients the freedom to activate their entire portfolio in support of their mission, and to do so with the confidence that their wealth will not be squandered on a series of well-intentioned but potentially flawed investments.
