The GIIN released its annual Impact Investor Survey: Key learnings and Figures

The Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN) published the 8^th edition of its Annual Impact Investor Survey, a comprehensive assessment of data on the global impact investing market comprising data and insights from 229 of the world’s leading impact investors, among which Investisseurs & Partenaires.

The report provides in-depth analysis of market activity and trends, covering topics such as: capital allocations by sector and geography, indicators of market development and industry challenges, approaches to impact measurement and management, and financial and impact performance. For the first time, this year’s report also includes a five-year trends analysis of growth and changes in the industry.

Download the Survey

Main learnings

• The impact investing industry is growing. Over half of the investors surveyed made their first impact investment in the last ten years, showing that there are many new entrants to the market

• Managing industry integrity: The growing involvement of large-scale, mainstream firms also presents some risks – in particular, the risk of ‘impact washing’, i.e. that some actors may be adopting the label without meaningful fidelity to impact. Encouragingly, impact investors are cognizant of this concern and emphasize the importance of greater transparency around impact to mitigate this risk.

• Impact investors demonstrate a strong commitment to measuring and managing impact and most of them recognize the power of their capital to help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals: 76% of impact investors track their investment performance to the SDGs or plan to do so in the future.

• The most commonly cited challenges facing the growth of the impact investing industry are: the “lack of appropriate capital across the risk/return spectrum” and the “lack of common understanding of the definitions and segments of the market”

Key Figures

Assets under management and Fundraising

• Respondents collectively manage over $228 billion in impact investing assets

• Median of $92M per impact investor

• $19 billion raised in 2017, for a median amount of $33 million

Investments

• Together the impact investors invested $35.5 billion into 11,136 deals during 2017

• Average ticket size is $3.2 million

• Impact investors plan to increase the amount of capital they invest by 8% in 2018

• 2/3 des investisseurs d'impact ne réalisent que des investissements d'impact mais 1/3 des investisseurs d'impact ont aussi une activité d'investissement conventionnelle en parallèle

Sub-Saharan Africa

• 12% of assets under management are located in Sub-Saharan Africa (3rd region behind North America and Latin America)

• 46% of impact investors have at least one investment in sub-Saharan Africa.

About the GIIN

The Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing the scale and effectiveness of impact investing around the world. The GIIN defines impact investments as “investments made into companies, organizations, and funds with the intention to generate social and environmental impact alongside a financial return”. Impact investments can be made in both emerging and developed markets, and target a range of returns from below market to market rate, depending upon the circumstances.

The GIIN builds critical infrastructure and supports activities, education, and research that help accelerate the development of a coherent impact investing industry.

For more information: www.thegiin.org