How do we create a financial system in which people and planet flourish?

The financial system could generate positive social and environmental impacts by driving the transition to sustainability while creating a fairer world. But, right now, it’s not doing enough.

There is a growing understanding that, in order to tackle the current sustainability crises, the financial sector needs to be in line with broader social goals.

Financial institutions are beginning to come under pressure from consumers as their role in funding activities contributing to environmental and social harm comes under the spotlight. But, despite some change, vague commitments to sustainability are not always being matched with concrete targets.

The impact investment sector is growing fast but concerted efforts are needed to make it mainstream. This will require new metrics and standards to measure impact, new skills and knowledge for practitioners and opportunities to share best practice within, and between, institutions.

Here, the Impact Management Project provide a range of practical tools, templates and examples for impact management.

The United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative provides tools to help stakeholders integrate sustainable finance practices and policies into their activities. These include tools to analyse impacts, transition risks, and the opportunities and risks from exposure to natural capital.

This report explores the role of community building as a strategy to advance changes, especially in the finance industry.

In this paper, IFOA highlights the urgent need for actuaries to consider the importance and the impacts of global biodiversity risks into their practice.

Sir Ronald Cohen explains here the Impact Revolution, by highlighting the need to support a world focused not only on minimizing harm on society and environment, but on doing quantifiable good for all.

This final report highlights policy recommendations for integrating ESG issues into investment practice as part of the regulatory and legal requirements.

Read here Christine Lagarde’s 32nd World Traders' Tacitus Lecture that outlines the need to rethink the role of finance, focusing on three main aspects: innovation, regulation and responsibility.

Here, FaithInvest collects key resources on faiths and investments, which are central to deliver more faith based activities on environmental issues.

Chatham House / Online / 7 December 2020, 16:30–18:00 GMT

The Impact Investment Network Map is a compelling visual database of the impact investing landscape.

How can financial flows be directed to natural climate solutions, in particular, forests? This workshop brought together scientists, NGOs and private and public investors to explore barriers and opportunities to increasing private capital investments into forests – one of the most promising natural climate solutions available.

The circular economy can contribute to achieving several of the Sustainable Development Goals, but investing in circular economy innovations and new business models is still considered high risk for financiers. Read here recommendations for how to de-risk investments and achieve sustainable and socially inclusive circular economy finance.

Professor Mariana Mazzucato explains the role of governments in rebuilding a sense of public purpose to help economies going beyond profit and integrating more social equity and environmental sustainability.

This report assesses the relationship between ESG and financial performance by analysing over 1000 previous studies on this topic. They find that improved financial performance due to ESG becomes more noticeable over longer time horizons.

In this article, WEF discusses the role of millennials in the investment industry to promote the uptake of more sustainable investment decisions as they are committed to allocating money with impact.

This PRI database contains over 650 policy tools and more than 300 policy revisions to encourage or require investors to consider long-term values as part of their investment decisions.

This reports highlights the harmonised principles underlying biodiversity impact assessment methodologies that financial institutions should adopt to evaluate the impact of investments on biodiversity.

In this online webinar, experts discuss how current trends in sustainable finance and ESG will impact African countries.

In collaboration with network partners, the World Economic Forum has worked to identify a set of universal, material ESG metrics and disclosures that capture sustainable, long-term value creation that embraces the wider demands of people and planet.

Explore here the routes by which the EU is approaching integrating sustainability considerations into its financial policies.

This guide for asset owners details the role of climate change in responsible investment decisions and practices, why it matters and what actions are needed to shape the investment process.

Read here GIIN’s analysis on the consequences of the global coronavirus pandemic on impact investments and key insights about the priorities and potential of the impact investing market’s response to COVID-19.

GIIN presents the 2020 Annual Investor Survey focusing on respondents’ reflections on past achievements and future challenges including market growth and the development of measurements and best practices in the impact space.

Find here an overview of growing momentum for sustainable investing among asset owners globally. Survey analysis gives insight into motivations, priorities and challenges.

In this report, TONIIC take a deep-dive on how certain foundations are busting through the misconceptions around impact investing and demonstrating that total-portfolio approaches to impact investing are achievable, regardless of constraints.

This EU level report provides an overview of the landscape “ecosystems” for social enterprises, salient trends and key challenges from across member countries.

Read here BlackRock’s outlook on why the long transition underway will reshape all asset prices and how a return advantage for sustainable investing can be gained during this transition.

Here, the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership outlines how banks can play their role in accelerating investments towards a low carbon economy and how a progressive climate bank should look like.

In this report, GIIN provides a comprehensive overview of investors motivations, investment practices and market trends that have been shaping the impact investing space in recent years.

In this report, the Financial Conduct Authority explains how effective stewardship should look like and what the minimum standards requirements should be for financial firms to promote long-term investments.

In this paper, CUSP reflects on the traditional assumptions of economic growth to understand what defines a good indicator and how long-term value based evaluations should be incorporated.

The methodology employed to develop and the results thereafter of the EU Taxonomy is detailed in this paper. The EU Taxonomy provides a common language for investors to coalesce around investments that encourage carbon mitigation whilst avoiding harm to society or the environment.

How big is the impact investing market? This paper breaks down the impact investment sector, establishing the overall size to be in the region of USD 50bn across 1,340 organizations.

This article presents ground-breaking insights from people in their late twenties-thirties working in the investment industry in Canada, the Netherlands, the UK, and the US.

See here the light-touch and practical framework that NPC have developed to compare organisations’ impact approach to best practice.

Dive into 2019 survey analysis here that illustrates the market growth and future direction of sustainable investments among United States asset managers.

Here, the financing gap to achieving achieve global sustainable development is analysed and radical new pathways for businesses, finance actors and stakeholders to bridge this gap are proposed.

In partnership with the Collaborative for Frontier Finance, Omidyar Network and Dutch Good Growth Fund, Dalberg Advisors undertake research to provides distinctions between types of funding gaps for small and growing businesses and identify better targeted financing solutions.

This article explores challenges and opportunities to make investing in natural infrastructure into reality while protecting natural resources' use.

The connections across the impact investing value chain and its current structural weaknesses are identified. This is used to propose various opportunities for scaling-up successful impact investment business models.

An Impact Investing Marketing Map map is introduced to identify organizations involved with impact investing and the themes and sectors they are investing in.

PRI present a guide for investor strategies to align investment portfolios with a lower carbon, more resilient economy. The guide focuses on three main areas of; low-carbon investment opportunities; integrating climate-related risks, and; phasing out investments in thermal coal.

Use this online learning platform from the Pensions Regulator to browse various learning modules and resources that can support building the minimum level of Trustee knowledge and understanding requirements.

This consultation paper from the Blended Finance Taskforce provides key insights on how blended finance can drive investments in Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to support global growth and long-term returns.

Read here the package of recommendations from the independent industry panel to the UK Government’s Patient Capital Review. The recommendations target three main areas of: unlocking institutional and retail capital; increasing number of venture capital firms that deploy patient capital; and increasing returns to scale-up investments.

This independent review, commissioned by the UK Government, identifies short-termism as a problem in UK equity markets. The causes of this are reported to be a misalignment of incentives within the investment chain, and the displacement of trust relationships by a culture based on transactions and trading.