What is Impact Investing?
Impact investing is an approach that aims to contribute to the achievement of measured positive social and environmental impacts. It has emerged as a significant opportunity to mobilize capital into investments that target measurable positive social, economic, or environmental impact alongside financial returns. A growing number of investors are incorporating impact investments into their portfolios. Many are adopting the SDGs and other goals as a reference point to illustrate the relationship between their investments and impact.
The impact investing market is relatively new but is growing rapidly, and is making progress in converging towards common frameworks for managing investments for impact. Some $2.3 trillion of assets have an intent for impact, of which $636 billion of these assets clearly have impact management and measurement processes in place. More than $400 billion is managed in accordance with the Impact Principles, the market standard for how to manage an investment portfolio for impact. Many of these investors use the Joint Impact Indicators to measure and report on progress.
What are the Impact Principles?
IFC—in consultation with a core group of external stakeholders—developed theOperating Principles for Impact Management, which are now followed by over 140 privately and publicly owned funds and institutions. These Principles support the development of the impact investing industry by establishing a common discipline around the management of investments for impact, and promote transparency and credibility by requiring annual disclosures of impact management processes with periodic independent verification
What are the Joint Impact Indicators?
TheJoint Impact Indicatorsare a harmonized set of indicators for key impact themes – climate, gender and job creation – used by a wide range of impact investors. They are aligned with the leading impact indicator sets: IRIS+ and HIPSO.
