MANAGING FOR IMPACT+
Report
September 2020
Snowball
Snowball, the multi-manager impact-focused investor, released a new report analysing the additional impact which the fund managers in its portfolio bring to the investments in their portfolios. Snowball surveyed 21 fund managers across its five categories of manager impact and moderated the managers’ self-assessed scores against its own proprietary impact framework.
Key findings:
- Fund managers are not performing as well as they think they are when it comes to impact: Managers over-estimate the impact they bring to their investments by an average of 10% when measured against Snowball’s proprietary best practice framework. However, there is high engagement from their managers to collaborate across the sector and continually improve and move towards standardised ways to manage for impact.
- Private market managers lead the way: The highest performing asset class was private debt, with public debt managers scoring the lowest investor contribution.
- Significant variation in scores across managers: The average score across all 21 managers was 10.3 out of 15. Scores range from 7.1 to the highest score of 13.3, with significant variation within and across asset classes.
- ‘Not new, not old’ outperformed both newer and long-established fund managers: “Middle-aged” managers (those operating between 5 and 20 years) performed best across all categories, except for impact risk management.
- Specialist managers significantly outperformed generalist managers: Managers which only invest for impact have a clear mission embedded throughout the organisation compared to generalist managers which are also investing across other non-impact themes.
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