Stockholm (NordSIP) – The Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN) has come a long way since its inception in 2009. Counting over 20.000 members, it is by far the largest network devoted to developing the impact investing industry globally. Understandably, when the organisation’s senior representatives carve out time from their busy schedules to visit Stockholm on 11 April, the local impact investment community is excited to welcome them.
Amit Bouri, GIIN’s CEO & co-founder, is undeniably the star of the event hosted and deftly moderated by Swedish sustainability veteran Ulrika Hasselgren, Chief Sustainability Officer at Coeli. Bouri and his colleague, Christian Rosenholm, Director of Institutional Engagement, also set the scene for an engaging panel discussion featuring varying approaches to impact investing across asset classes – from private equity and debt solutions to thematic and fundamental public equity strategies and emerging market debt. Jolin Holmgren from EQT, Niclas During from Trill Invest, and four of Coeli’s portfolio managers – Joel Etzler, Maciej Woznica, Mikael Petersson, and Simon Park share their own definitions of and insights into impact investing.
“Have we reached the summit?”
Bouri’s dramatic opening line might be justified, given the impressive growth the trillion-dollar-worth impact investing market has witnessed over the past decade. The experts at GIIN are well aware of the development, having conducted comprehensive surveys regularly since 2010 to gauge the pulse of this rapidly evolving space.
Despite the strong momentum, however, Bouri admits that we are nowhere near where we are meant to be. The progress towards meeting the sustainable development goals (SDGs) is insufficient and we need to be much more ambitious as we advance. He mentions the additional headwinds that the industry is facing currently, from issues of integrity to a severe political backlash, especially in the US, before concluding that we are a long way from the summit, still trudging at the base camp.
Combining Scale with Integrity
Stressing the importance of credible and comparable impact data, Bouri is adamant that it is a prerequisite for the industry to grow with integrity. To help investors along the way, the GIIN has developed the world’s most comprehensive system for impact measurement and management, IRIS+, using the experience and feedback of thousands of stakeholders accumulated for over a decade,
IRIS+ is a free, publicly available resource and Bouri encourages more investors to subscribe. It aims to describe the goals, strategies, and expectations of impact investors using a common language and to offer knowledge based on evidence, research, cases, guidance, and best practices. It also helps investors compare results using core metrics and standard data categories so that they can act on impact data from core metrics. IRIS+ can also empower impact investors to communicate performance with stakeholders using standard data and templates.
Impact Goes Holistic
According to Rosenholm, applying impact as a lens across a whole portfolio is incredibly powerful in terms of the volume of capital it can unlock, but it is even more powerful in terms of the shift in thinking it represents. A recent GIIN publication, Holistic portfolio construction with an impact lens: a vital approach for institutional asset owners in a changing world, explores this idea further, outlining the steps investors can take to implement such a strategy, starting with planning and conceptualisation and moving toward the ultimate goal of an impact lens applied across an entire portfolio. Using the specific case of a teacher’s pension fund investing in affordable housing brings practical light to the theoretical framework.
The GIIN is clear about its ambition: impact thinking needs to stretch across the financial system. “There can’t just be a subset of investors focused on addressing climate change or inequality or nature loss, we need all investors to do so,” says Bouri.
As it happens, the following panel discussion is a perfect illustration of precisely such a holistic, all-encompassing view of impact investing.
