Aon’s Oliver MacArthur argues that meaningful positive social and environmental impact can be generated by active ownership across a broad universe of companies, and alongside investments deployed to capitalise companies explicitly delivering solutions to sustainability challenges in listed equities.
How is ‘impact’ generated?
The Global Impact Investing Network defines impact investments as “investments made with the intention to generate positive, measurable social and environmental impact alongside a financial return.” Investors are posed with the question: How?
A global coalition of impact investors known as The Impact Management Project (IMP) provides a useful steer; they consider an investment’s impact to be a function of the underlying assets the investment supports, and the contribution the investor makes to enable those assets to achieve that impact.