Read time: 3 minutes

Innovation and creating purposeful change for communities is at the very heart of what social impact finance is all about.  Such impact investments have never shied away from embracing that latest technological innovation or challenging the status quo.  In this vein, FinTech initiatives such as blockchain  have the potential to prove that they can be the catalyst for democratising data and opening new worlds of possibility to users and stakeholders around the globe.  A recent Harvard Business Review research project backs up these claims, and believes that there is strong evidence that blockchain can not only transform businesses and governments, but also have a profound impact on society as a whole.
Continue Reading Waves of change – how FinTech can drive the future of social impact finance

Read time – 2 minutes 30 seconds

Social finance, impact investing, blended finance…the endless industry jargon and terminology in this emerging asset class can be confusing. In this series, our industry leading global Social Impact Finance group looks to demystify the social finance market and its growing importance for financial institutions and investors.  

Greed is no longer good. The next generation of investors increasingly demand that their investments do more than just generate a financial return. Demand for social investment products is driven, in part, by millennials who prefer to invest in alignment with personal values. In response to this growing demand, chatter in financial markets is awash with talk of the ‘spectrum of capital’ – a map of the broad range of risk and return strategies that exist within impact investing markets, and how those relate to wider capital market strategies. The 2014 report from the G8 Social Impact Investment Taskforce, Asset Allocation Working Group, illustrated the landscape based on both investor financial objectives and impact (see diagram below).
Continue Reading Impact Finance Series: The Spectrum of Capital