What are Impact Investments?
Impact investments are investments that deliver competitive financial returns while generating positive social and environmental impacts.
For some clients the ultimate goal is to build an investment portfolio comprising 100% impact investments. For other clients, impact investments form part of a broader “ethically screened” investment portfolio. A balanced portfolio for these clients may for instance, contain a range of positively and negatively screened ethical investments across cash, fixed interest, property and Australian and international shares with a portion in impact investments diversified across asset classes.
The range of impact investments is broad and varied including wind and solar farms, five star environmental CBD commercial properties, businesses intentionally designed to employ or provide products and services to vulnerable individuals, government backed bonds for social services, and essential social infrastructure such as disability housing.
Impact investing has tremendous potential to help address some of our most entrenched societal issues and it is fantastic to see interest in this exciting area of investing really kick into gear over the past year.