The Economist magazine put on its second impact investment gathering in a London still reeling from this week’s Grenfell Tower fire and recent terrorist attacks.
Takeaways from the event: “Increasingly ‘impact’ is a measure of externalities embedded. So in the future all investing will be impact,” said Rodney Schwartz, CEO of ClearlySo, a London-based impact investment bank. He added, “I won’t rest until the $150 trillion in the world is invested with an impact investing lens.”
The IFC’s Gavin Wilson said development finance has already undergone a fundamental shift, saying, “Private capital is now at the heart of development.”
Big Issue magazine’s Nigel Kershaw said bending impact investing to fit mainstream finance will stifle innovation, “It must come to us.”
The ImPact’s Abigail Noble urged moderation in ongoing efforts to make impact measurement on par with financial reporting (see #Signals, below). “Measurement and transparency are critical to the impact sector’s maturation, not standardization, control and regulation,” she told ImpactAlpha. “Don’t let perfect be enemy of good enough with impact metrics.”
See ImpactAlpha’s coverage of February’s impact investing event from the Economist:
Name-checking the Headliners at the Economist’s Impact Investing Conference
