From Ideas to Practice, Pilots to Strategy: Practical Solutions and Actionable Insights on How to Do Impact Investing

This report is the second publication in the World Economic Forum's Mainstreaming Impact Investing Initiative. The report takes a deeper look at why and how asset owners began to include impact investing in their portfolios and continue to do so today, and how they overcame operational and cultural constraints affecting capital flow. Given that impact investing expertise is spread among dozens if not hundreds of practitioners and academics, the report is a curation of some -- but certainly not all -- of those leading voices. The 15 articles are meant to provide investors, intermediaries and policy-makers with actionable insights on how to incorporate impact investing into their work.The report's goals are to show how mainstream investors and intermediaries have overcome the challenges in the impact investment sector, and to democratize the insights and expertise for anyone and everyone interested in the field. Divided into four main sections, the report contains lessons learned from practitioner's experience, and showcases best practices, organizational structures and innovative instruments that asset owners, asset managers, financial institutions and impact investors have successfully implemented

Financing a sustainable ocean economy

The ocean, which regulates climate and supports vital ecosystem services, is crucial to our Earth system and livelihoods. Yet, it is threatened by anthropogenic pressures and climate change. A healthy ocean that supports a sustainable ocean economy requires adequate financing vehicles that generate, invest, align, and account for financial capital to achieve sustained ocean health and governance. However, the current finance gap is large; we identify key barriers to financing a sustainable ocean economy and suggest how to mitigate them, to incentivize the kind of public and private investments needed for topnotch science and management in support of a sustainable ocean economy

Growth Pangs of a Microfinance Institution: Trying to speed ahead without going off-course

1-27CSU Case Studies (Case Study Unit

Social Enterprise in Asia: Context and Opportunities

In an increasing number of instances, Social Enterprises (SEs) are accomplishing Asia's socio-economic goals in both the for-profit and not-for-profit sectors. Moreover, Asian SEs are finding increasing opportunities to raise capital, in line with the emergence of an exchange or financial platform specifically for SEs, a rise in Islamic banking and Shariah compliant funds and increasing government interest in incubating social enterprises as a new sector. While SEs have had, and are likely to continue to have, significant impact on their communities, they have received little attention from academia. There is a dearth of analytical research aimed at understanding the causes and impacts of Asia's explosion of social innovation, or of the direction such innovation is likely to take. This paper aims to provide such a comprehensive overview. In particular, this paper will contextualise the efforts to develop a methodology for measuring social impact of sustainable SEs in Asia. By defining the motivations of financial platforms, institutional and retail impact investors, government regulators, clients and operators of SEs in Asia, and how these might differ from those in Europe or the United States, this paper will not only provide a clearer general understanding of the environment in which the Asian SEs thrive and operate, it will also analyse to what ends and how different stakeholders are likely to process the information stemming from such measurement. This work will therefore provide the foundational understanding of how the flow of capital and indeed the entire social enterprise sphere is likely to develop in Asia in the years to come