Eyes on the Horizon: Impact Investing

> Posted by Center Staff

What’s the current state of impact investing? It’s expanding and diversifying across sectors and geographies, and recent years have yielded better impact measurement practices, quality of investment opportunities, and support stakeholder involvement. Need more specifics? This week GIIN and J.P. Morgan released the results of their fifth annual impact investing survey, Eyes on the Horizon, offering data and industry insights on these and other areas.

The survey serves as an annual pulse-taking for the growing industry, consulting with investors around the world on their performance, as well as their perceptions on progress and what’s ahead. The 2015 survey tapped 146 impact investors – fund managers, banks, development finance institutions, foundations, and pension funds. Together the cohort committed $10.6 billion in impact investments in 2014, with plans to increase this figure by 16 percent in 2015. The 82 organizations that participated in the survey last and this year reported a 7 percent increase in capital committed between 2013 and 2014.

Along with previous survey topics, like types of investors and number and size of investments, this year’s assessment also covered loss protection, technical assistance, impact management and measurement, and exits.

Here are a few of the survey’s main findings:

  • Housing accounts for 27 percent of respondents’ assets under management, with a similar percentage for microfinance/financial services. Next is energy at 10 percent, followed by healthcare and food/agriculture at 5 percent each.
  • Most respondents reported plans to increase their allocations to energy, followed by food/agriculture, and healthcare.
  • Most investors plan to increase their investments in sub-Saharan Africa, followed by East & Southeast Asia, and Latin America & the Caribbean.
  • 98 percent of respondents indicated their investments’ social and/or environmental impact outperformed or is in-line with their expectations, and 91 percent indicated their investments’ financial performance out-performed or is in-line with their expectations.
  • 89 percent of respondents reported no significant risk events in 2014.
  • 99 percent of respondents measure the social or environmental performance of their investments, with most aligning with IRIS.

For more details and findings, read the report here.

Have you read?

Four Challenges for Impact Investing

Impact Investing Landscape: Trends to Watch

What Impact Investors Could Learn from Microfinance