This article has been written by Sourabh Kumar Singh, pursuing a Diploma in M&A, Institutional Finance, and Investment Laws (PE and VC transactions) from LawSikho.

Introduction

Invest investing is an investment system that plans to produce explicit valuable social or natural impacts notwithstanding monetary benefits. Impact investing may appear as various resource classes and may bring about numerous particular results. The focal point of this kind of investing is to utilize cash and venture capital for positive social outcomes. The growing market for impact investing provides funds to solve the world’s most pressing challenges. These areas include affordable and accessible sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, conservation, microfinance, and basic services, including housing, health care, and education.

Although it has only recently been recognized, impact investing has existed in various forms for a long time. There is a history of individual investors using the socially responsible investment to express their values. This kind of investment behavior is usually defined as avoiding investment in specific companies or activities that have a negative impact. Since the 1960s, government-sponsored financial institutions, such as the World Bank’s private investment institutions, International Finance Corporation (IFC), and the US Foreign Private Investment Corporation, have invested in impact investing in developing countries.

Why impact investing?

Impact investing challenges the long-held view that social and environmental problems can only be solved through charitable giving, and market investing should only focus on achieving financial returns. The impact investing market provides investors with diverse and feasible opportunities to promote social and environmental solutions through investments that also generate financial returns. Many types of investors are entering the growing market for impact investing. Here are some common investor motivations.

• Banks, pension funds, financial advisors, and wealth management institutions can provide clients with investment opportunities for individuals and institutions interested in general or specific social or environmental reasons. 
• Institutions and family foundations can use significantly more assets to advance their main social and/or environmental goals while maintaining or increasing their overall donations. 
• Government investors and development financial institutions can provide private sector investors with proof of financial viability while targeting specific social and environmental goals.

Does impact invest work?

Most impact investors seek returns comparable to market interest rates, and some impact funds may even outperform the market. Generally speaking, the return on impact investment tends to be slightly lower than the market average. In a study by the University of California, the average internal rate of return for medium-impact funds was 6.4%, compared with 7.4% for search funds without impact.

What is the difference between ESG and impact investing?

Environmental, social, and governance practices refer to business decisions that may affect the company’s performance. For example, companies that deliberately employ child labor or engage in discrimination may be at a competitive disadvantage, especially when marketing to socially conscious consumers. On the other hand, impact investment is an investment approach that seeks to specifically optimize goals other than returns. This may include investments in clean energy, education, or microfinance.

Who is making impact investments?

Impact investing has attracted a variety of investors, including individual investors and institutional investors.

• Fund managers
• Development financial institutions
• Diversified financial institutions/banks
• Private foundations
• Pension funds and insurance companies
• Family offices
• Individual investors
• Non-governmental organizations
• Religious institutions

3 steps to start impact investing

1. Learn the lingo and do some research

Learn about some of the acronyms and terms you might encounter in the impact investing space. As you may know, there are many ways to participate in impact investing, from index funds that select companies based on specific criteria to venture capital funds that provide funds for social enterprises. A basic understanding of the terminology used to discuss this type of investment will help you evaluate your options and find out what makes sense to you.

2. Expect a return

Investing with your values ​​equals fewer returns This is a myth. According to the Sustainable and Responsible Investment Forum, many studies have shown that impact investing performance generally meets, and sometimes even exceeds, traditional investments.

3. Start small and start now

There are many options for impact investing and analysis paralysis is easy. For example, you can start by allocating a small portion of your investment portfolio to index funds that are screened for environmental, social, or governance (ESG) criteria. For those who have a donor-advised fund, such as the Fidelity Charitable Giving Account, that allows them to invest charitable funds for tax-free growth, they can choose to start with four impact investing index funds. “Fidelity Charitable makes it very easy”,

Types of impact investing

1. Social investing — Social investing is a term with numerous utilizations; however, it by and large alludes to contributing that deals with friendly and ecological issues. Impact investing is a subset of social investing; it alludes just to the social investing that effectively tries to have a positive effect.
2. Nonprofits– Non-profit organizations can act both as impact investors and as recipients of impact investments to enhance their impact.
3. Private sector activity in poor countries- Impact investing just incorporates those ventures made with the unequivocal goal of having a positive social or ecological effect, for example, work creation for low-pay individuals.
4. Enterprises– Several terms have arisen that articulate the part of companies in addressing social and ecological issues. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is characterized as the combination of business tasks and qualities, where the interests, customers, employees, the community, and the environment—are reflected in the organization’s approaches and actions.
5. Inclusive business– Inclusive business alludes to feasible business openings that are productive and advantage low-pay networks. These organizations may likewise be viewed as friendly reason organizations or social enterprises.

Key trends in impact investing

1. A more accessible market – In the relatively recent past, interested investors had not many spots to go to figure out how to contribute for impact. We presently have better apparatuses and improved frameworks. For investors looking for investment transactions, qualified investors can join the 1000 users of the impact base online searchable catalog, which now provides profiles of nearly 250 funds and products or benchmark indices such as Impact Assets 50. 
2. Retail investors look to enter the market– As the market increasing, more and more retail investors want to join the market of impact investing particularly millennials are seemed to be more interested as they want to make more money and also want to take steps in bringing the right impact in society. According to a survey conducted by Fidelity in 2019 (2), more than 3 out of 4 high-net-worth millennials reported having made impact investments, such as investing in companies with good social or environmental practices.
3. The need for strong fund managers continues to increase- Institutional investors want more options as they grow their impact investment portfolios. Some new players have recently begun to focus on strengthening impact investing fund managers and intermediaries.
4. Impact measurement has become the norm- In the new report from J.P. Morgan and the GIIN, 96% of investors expressed that they use measurements to gauge the social and additional ecological effect, and 70% of respondents said that the normalization of measurements is critical to industry advancement. In the event that measurements like the GIIN’s IRIS continue to be adopted more thoroughly, this will profit individual managers, yet in addition the business in general—prompting more normalization and benchmarking, and an expansion of performance data.

Inside the industry of impact investing

According to a report published by Global impact investing (GIIN) the overall impact investing industry AUM is estimated at USD 502 billion as of the end of 2018. While aggregate AUM is estimated at USD 502 billion, individual investor portfolios vary widely in size. Whereas the median investor AUM is USD 29 million, the average is USD 452 million, indicating that while most organizations are relatively small, several investors manage very large impact investing portfolios.

As per the 2020 review by the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN), the worldwide effect impact investing sector size is $715 billion and is extending quickly. Breaking its long-term record, the 2020 effect impact investor survey addressed the most elevated number of respondents over the most recent 10 years – 294 global impact investors with an aggregate $404 billion worth of impact investing assets under administration.

In the study, the respondents expressed that an incremental sophistication of management in the practices and impact measurement have essentially prompted the market’s development.

Impact investment in India

India is fast booming into a hub for impact investing activities. Somewhere in the range of 2010 and 2016, India pulled in more than 50 dynamic impact investors, who poured in more than $5.2 billion. About $1.1 billion was put into resources into 2016 alone.

Toward the beginning of this decade, interests in clean energy (wind, and little hydropower age) ruled the effect of putting resources into India. This changed in 2013 as fund streams into clean energy eased back. Enormous investments in scale institutions in financial incorporation have balanced a portion of this decrease. By and large, the area blend has changed. Clean energy added up to approximately 40% of the arrangement esteem in 2014–16, declining from 60% in 2011–13, in view of an increment in both the volume and worth of commitment from microfinance as the sector matured.

With a blend of high friendly requirements with powerful market influences, impact investors in India can put forth a strong vision for development. Impact investments can possibly grow 20 to 24 percent a year now and in 2025, coming from $6 billion to $8 billion in the organization.

Challenges of impact investing

1. One of the challenges of impact investing discussed is how to measure success. Environmental impacts are often easier to measure than social impacts due to more common quantifiable data, such as avoided carbon dioxide emissions or gigawatts of renewable energy produced. On the other hand, the social impact may include the amount of affordable housing provided or the dollar savings made by the government.
2. The size of most funds is frequently excessively small for mainstream investors to have the option to deal with. While the normal impact investing funds may be close to $40 million, and the middle is more modest, the normal venture capital is nearer to $200 million. Not exclusively are the extents of impact funds not proportionate with the size of the social difficulties they focus on; this scale cost of fund management takes a relatively big bite out of returns to investors.
3. Impact investing doesn’t yet have the sort of ecosystem expected to help organizations as they move from starting thought testing to scale-up. The venture capital includes numerous funds that have practical experience in specific slices of the business development measure, from pre-business angel investors to later stage subsidizes that can contribute and afterward supply extension capital. Notwithstanding the cash, such an ecosystem gives custom-made mentorship to entrepreneurs, adding to the pace of business achievement
4. Getting the equilibrium between delivering a strong return to investors and ensuring the community issue the financial investors are endeavoring to determine gets sufficient funding is another obstruction impact investing is at present exploring.

5. Impact investing isn’t yet mobilizing a lot of financing from the genuine private sector. By a long shot, most of the funds right now considered as impact investing are coming from development finance establishments and significant establishments –especially microfinance investing 15 years prior.

Notwithstanding, it’s hard to achieve consistency of estimation across various ventures in light of the huge range of impacts, an absence of shared traits, and trouble in measuring and looking at impact.

Conclusion

Impact investing is part of a growing number of social responsibility practices that aim to reduce some of the negative effects of traditional business activities. By supporting businesses and industries in worthwhile causes, impact investing can generate social or environmental benefits while generating profits. In the course of the most recent couple of years, gigantic advancement has been had in the emerging impact investment sector. To be sure, a significant number of the difficulties are ascribed to the developing torments of the new sector. Impact investing will develop, histories will be fabricated and discernments about monetary execution will be figured out. Up to that point, a level of responsibility will be needed by those financial investors deliberately hoping to distribute capital towards impact speculations.

References

1. https://thegiin.org/research/publication/impinv-survey-2020.
2. https://www.fidelitycharitable.org/guidance/philanthropy/impact-investing.html.
3. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jpdallmann/2018/12/31/impact-investing-just-a-trend-or-the-best-strategy-to-help-save-our-world/.
4. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/private-equity-and-principal-investors/our-insights/a-closer-look-at-impact-investing.

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