How impact investing could transform the funds landscape

Today’s landscape of Sustainable and Responsible Investment (SRI) funds is the result of more than thirty years of investment innovation. In the main, investors have tried to define and limit the ‘inputs’ into an investment process; first through ethical screens, and later with ESG analysis and stewardship codes.  Often such activity is bolted on to an otherwise unchanged investment process.  In this way, the SRI funds industry has often only partially fulfilled the demands of clients who wish to use their investments to generate solid returns at the same time as bringing about positive changes in the wider world.

Impact Investing shifts the focus on to ‘outputs’ and repurposes business ethics, ESG analysis, sustainable business and investment stewardship as the means to a more rounded objective.  This shift has the potential to mobilise far more capital to be invested with a positive purpose, and with much greater effect.

Read the full article by Seb Beloe, Head of Research at WHEB Asset Management