Our approach to impact management

The impact management cycle

This cycle explains in six steps how we manage impact

1. Our vision on impact

The way we manage impact builds on our longstanding mission to make money work for positive change and help to create a society that protects and promotes the quality of people’s lives, with human dignity at its core.

Through our investments, we create positive social and economic impact to contribute to accelerating the transition towards a more sustainable society, while generating a balanced return. Explore our Impact Reports to see the impact we made last year.

2. Our strategy

All our investments contribute to at least one of our five transition themes. We offer a wide range of financial instruments, from blended finance and private debt and equity to listed equities and bond investments.

The impact objectives of our funds are based on a Theory of Change (ToC), which is a description of how we expect our investment activities to lead to positive impact. It outlines a pathway, or chain of causal steps, which we expect to lead to our goal.

3. Our activities

Our main activity is to invest money entrusted to us by our clients. Through integrated sustainability and financial analysis, we consider the impact of every investment opportunity from different perspectives.

As active investors, we engage with our investees to increase our impact and accelerate sustainable transitions. This ranges from proxy voting to strategic engagement programmes and facilitating best practices amongst investment companies. We may also take a board seat at private investee companies. Furthermore, we aim to change the financial system from within by proving that values-based banking and impact investing is commercially robust and resilient. Thought leadership and lobbying are important elements of our change finance strategy.

Find more details in our Minimum Standards and other process descriptions and policies.

4. Monitoring and analysis

By monitoring and analysing the positive and negative results of our investments and the results of our other activities, we can understand the effects our investments have in the real economy.

We cannot control or monitor all effects of our investments in the short or the long run, but we should be aware of intended as well as potential unintended consequences of our investments.

Technology, regulation, and sustainability research are increasingly focusing on improving impact measurement practices. We contribute, test and apply some of the latest developments and as such enable improved consistency, transparency and clarity of impact reporting.

5. Learning and adapting

Our mission is set, but our goals are dynamic. By analysing our investments and considering an ever-changing context in which our investees operate, we look at what we can do to improve our impact performance.

We analyse the quantitative and qualitative results of our investments and apply the best practices and lessons learned.

This ranges from the financial instruments we use, to the regions and types of investments we target, to how we engage. It also includes changing the assumptions in our ToCs and indicators to track progress.

6. Transparent communication and reporting

To live up to our commitment as a responsible and transparent investor, we regularly publish information on our investment activities and financial and non-financial results in monthly and annual reports.

To measure the attainment of their sustainable investment objectives, the funds report on impact indicators and contextualise how the capital of our clients is put to work.

Our approach to impact management

The impact management cycle

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