Making impact investing easily accessible
Currently, those engaging in impact investing tend to be organisations with considerable resources or high-net-worth individuals. To close the financing gap for the UN SDGs, it’s vital to engage all parts of society.
Impact investing is an investment made with the intention to generate positive, measurable social and environmental impact alongside a financial return.The impact investing market has grown tremendously and is now valued at just over $500 billion. However, those engaging in impact investing tend to be organisations with considerable resources or high-net-worth individuals. To close the financing gap for the UN SDGs, it’s vital to engage all parts of society. Being able to offer impact investing to retail customers of all shapes and sizes will help leverage new capital from a largely untapped market.
Customers under the age of 40 are particularly interested in this area. For example, millennial investors are nearly twice as likely to invest in companies or funds that target specific social or environmental outcomes. This is also the first generation of digital natives, having grown up with the digital tools needed to make impact investing simple and engaging. As this generation starts having children of their own, they will start engaging in long-term investments for their families. Impact investing is therefore a perfect tool for young families interested in protecting their children’s future. If you are investing in your children’s future, wouldn’t you want that future to be worth investing in?
The challenge: How might we democratise impact investing so that every single person can easily invest to make the world a better place?
How can we engage with this challenge?
You might like to start thinking about what causes you would champion with your own finance portfolio, if there were no barriers to investment.
- For inspiration, read about some of the challenges faced by the industry in giving more access to individuals.