Make your money matter – creating impact through public equity

"I can’t get no impact action," the Rolling Stones might have sung back in the days. Well, the world has changed. Today, there’s hardly any investor satisfaction without impact action. Here’s our investment experts’ white paper on impact investing with the added benefit of introductory comments by a member of the Vontobel family pool of shareholders.

The headlines scream climate disaster almost daily, but there are hopes that the situation can be brought under control. In the recent international effort, the US and China, not usually on friendly terms, now seem willing to co-operate on fighting climate change. While “big government” and regulatory initiatives will play an important part, it’s companies that will do the legwork. This offers opportunities to investors, especially those seeking to produce a measurable positive impact.

Impact investing focuses on projects or businesses able to drive progressive change or support transition processes, for example towards climate goals and social inequalities. The way to do this is to actively include companies to create a positive social or environmental effect. To evaluate whether the companies’ goods or services actually have the desired effect, impact-focused investment managers measure and report benefits – the impact – in a transparent manner. Impact investors typically use some of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and specific impact objectives as framework for targeting investments.

Read the white paper