A triple bottom line return: impact investing

The essential characteristics of impact investing are intentionality, expectations of financial return, and a measurable impact. Impact investing requires an assessment of three analysis profiles: profits, people, and planet. The development of standard measurement systems will be an important step both for the involvement of traditional investors and for helping social enterprises to develop a greater capacity to measure their achieved results. Although the impact investing market has demonstrated an exponential growth in recent years it still remains a niche within the SRI universe. An impact investor must possess further analytical and valuation skills. The inclusion in a portfolio of the “impact investing” asset class can be assessed by comparing the performance (liquidity, risk and return) of a portfolio with vs. without impact investing.