Roadmap for the Future of Impact Investing: Reshaping Financial Markets

Report
March 2018
Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN)
By:

The Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN), today launched Roadmap for the Future of Impact Investing: Reshaping Financial Markets, a framework for collective action to accelerate development of the impact investing market and build a new future in which finance is instrumental to social and environmental progress. Commenced at the ten-year anniversary of the coining of the term impact investing, the Roadmap assesses industry progress to date, codifies a shared vision for the financial markets, and outlines specific actions needed to exponentially enhance the scale and effectiveness of impact investing across the world.

The Roadmap details six categories of action to drive progress toward the vision. For each category, the Roadmap describes specific actions needed, which stakeholders should lead on these actions, and a timeframe. Enacting the plan will require collective action by leaders from the entire impact investing ecosystem.

The six categories of action:

  • Strengthen the identity of impact investing by establishing clear principles and standards for practice
  • Change the paradigm that governs investment behavior and expectations about the responsibility of finance in society via asset owner leadership and updated finance theory
  • Design tools and services that support the incorporation of impact into the routine analysis, allocation, and deal-making activities of investors
  • Develop products suited to the needs and preferences of the full spectrum of investors, from retail to institutional and of various types of investees
  • Increase supply of trained investment professionals and pipeline of investment-ready enterprises through targeted professional education
  • Introduce policies and regulation that both remove barriers and incentivize impact investments

The Roadmap was developed with inputs from more than 350 individuals operating in the impact investing ecosystem around the world as well as from extensive desk research into progress in the field to date, how successful movements evolve, and how paradigm-shifting systemic change takes place.
 

This report is tagged under:

  • Impact measurement