Emerging signals

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.