Mainstreaming Impact Investing: A practical guide

The World Economic Forum’s report, Charting the Course: How Mainstream Investors can Design Visionary and Pragmatic Impact Investing Strategies, offers actionable guidance to get double-bottom line returns.

Contains actionable roadmaps which help interested mainstream investors explore and make impact investments across asset classes given best-practices and lessons-learned from experienced impact investors.

CEOs and CIOs from top financial institutions were instrumental in the creation of this report – including those of Deloitte, UBS AG, Standard Chartered, Morgan Stanley, Zurich Insurance Group, Caxton Associates and PensionDanmark – showing that impact investing has become a priority for such institutions.

New York, USA, 16 September 2014 – Charting the Course: How Mainstream Investors can Design Visionary and Pragmatic Impact Investing Strategies, is the culmination of a year-long research effort with investors to demonstrate concrete strategies for how for-profit companies can create transformational positive social impact.

Impact investing – an investment approach which creates both financial returns and positive impact that is actively measured – is continuing to be a focus in high-level circles as seen through recent convenings hosted by the Pope, the White House and the G8, while at the same time receiving increased interest from the millennial generation which is set to inherit some USD $30 trillion over the coming decades. Charting the Course, contains actionable and customisable roadmaps on how to define an impact investing vision and strategy, create a supporting organisation  and utilise resources from the collaborative impact investing “ecosystem”. These actions will help mainstream investors harness the positive power of private capital markets for public social good alongside financial returns.

This report is the sequel to From the Margins to the Mainstream which over the past year has become among the top-referenced reports on impact investing, globally. Yet for most investors today – impact investing still needs to be translated from a compelling idea into sound strategies. Charting the Course aims to meet this need by offering a three-staged roadmap that allows mainstream investors to ask the right questions, define their investment principles, and draw on the right resources.

“Impact investing increasingly resonates with investors – it aligns with their values and it makes long-term business sense. But while impact investing entered the mainstream mind set, it is not yet part of investors’ strategy, operations and culture. We wrote Charting the Course to offer interested investors roadmaps on how to engage with impact investing, which are customizable to an investor’s starting point, level of interest, long-term vision and goals.” explained Abigail Noble, Associate Director and Head of Impact Investing Initiatives at the World Economic Forum.

“What we’re looking for is intentionality, measurability and profitability. There are investment opportunities out there to achieve this. Impact investing is not philanthropy or exotic niche investments.” stated Cecilia Reyes, Chief Investment Officer of Zurich Insurance Group. “What it takes, though, is a commitment to make impact investing an integral part of the overall investment approach, executed in a structured and disciplined way. And it takes a culture and investment philosophy that value the impact created.”

“Impact investments turn market failures into social and commercial opportunities, providing funds for innovative projects while rewarding investors for the risks taken. For UBS and its clients it is therefore a symbiosis of both smart macro-investments and high social impact interventions and the new World Economic Forum report helps investors to understand risks and opportunities.” said Sergio P. Ermotti, Group Chief Executive Officer of UBS AG.