Our Vision
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To create sustainable growth, with accountable capital and actions that make for a more impactful, inclusive economy.
Impact Investing: To connect informed capital to relevant business opportunities essential to the local economic fabric of our markets.
Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG): To build resilient funds and companies, to defend them with good governance and to unlock value with smart ESG solutions.
International Development: To proactively bring interdisciplinary methods of human and economic development to Impact Investment and ESG solutions that are locally relevant, sustainable and accountable.
Our Mission
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We accelerate the resilience of innovation, impact and returns to drive sustainability. We accomplish this through global + local experience, expertise and networks. We assemble relevant and scalable opportunities, inform capital and embed practical solutions. To that end, we advocate for and challenge capital to respond to bespoke client-centered needs.
The Needs
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1. Substantial market opportunity for Impact Investment funds: The Global Impact Investment Network (GIIN) estimates the size of the global impact investing market to be $502 billion (2019). Also, Impact investing and ESG related investing is one of the fastest-growing aspects of asset management. “Sustainable funds attracted an estimated $8.9bn in net flows in the first six months of 2019, surpassing the $5.5bn in flows for all of 2018” FT. Moreover, the market has oriented to financing the SDGs with a need for more investors and clients to align with or design new products to achieve the 17 SDGs by 2030.
Source: Financial Times, ESG money market funds grow 15% in first half of 2019.
2. Chasing an alpha advantage: There is a correlation between robust ESG implementation, strategy, company performance and financial outperformance, diversification and better risk mitigation. “ESG momentum and tilt strategies outperformed the MSCI World Index by 16.8% and 11.2% in active cumulative returns respectively over ten years.” (The PRI’s ESG and Alpha Study). The same is true for gender-lens investing where there is a proven positive correlation between gender balance and higher financial returns. “Gender balanced teams have a 20% higher Net Internal Rate of Return, 64% versus 55% higher valuation increases representing better-performing companies and 2x the investment rate into female entrepreneurs.” (IFC, Rock Creek, Oliver Wymen, Moving Toward Gender Balance in Private Equity and Venture Capital.) It pays off to do the right thing.
Source: IFC, Rock Creek, Oliver Wymen, Moving Toward Gender Balance in Private Equity and Venture Capital.
3. Impact and ESG are the new status quo: There is a rising call to action from clients and employees for organisations to hold a position on Impact and ESG. This call to action is due to changing demographics and convergence of visible environmental and social effects of inequality and climate change. In a recent study by KPMG International, more than one-third (36 percentage) of C-suite and board members surveyed indicated that investor pressure had increased the company's focus on ESG.”
