Content Overview
Advancing a world in which all investments are made and measured in consideration of their integrated financial, social, and environmental impacts.
Impact Frontiers
Impact Frontiers is a learning and innovation collaboration among asset managers and owners, alongside partners in the impact investing field.
Impact Frontiers builds the capacity of investors to manage impact and integrate impact with financial data, analysis, frameworks and processes.
Through confidential structured meetings and activities, cohort members experiment with new approaches, share their tools and experiences, learn from peers, benefit from thought partnership and advance the state of impact management practice in the sector.
The cohort in Canada launched in July 2021.
Cohort members are adressing four foundational questions
Cohort members are undertaking a structured process to answer questions that any impact investor faces.
Asset Managers:
- Which investments or loans create more or less impact – and how do we know?
- Which investments or loans make more or less money?
- Given the above, which types of impact in which contexts increase risk-adjusted financial returns; which require a financial concession; and which have no relationship with financial performance?
- How can we use insights about impact and profitability to inform decision-making on individual investments, and to improve the impact and/or the financial performance of the portfolio as a whole?
- How can we communicate the financial and impact performance of portfolios in a more integrated way?
Asset Owners:
- Which asset managers offer the greatest positive impact? How can we better understand asset managers’ impact and support them in improving it?
- How can impact inform capital allocations within and across asset classes?
- How can we aggregate and communicate the impact performance of multi-asset class portfolios?
Collaboration is driving learning and innovation
Cohort members are:
- Exploring challenges specific to individual asset classes
- Cross-fertilizing ideas across asset classes, investor types and geographies
- Working together to find ways to improve the flow of impact information between companies, asset managers and asset owners
Direct support and engagement
Cohort members are:
- Using their our own data to create their our own approach, customized to their organization’s unique context, strategy and goals
- Getting support in building buy-in and leading change within their organizations
- Leaning on thought partnership program partners and convenors
“Impact Frontiers was transformational for our organization. We have applied the concepts across all of our fund and incubator programs, and use them to evaluate each investment transaction. Participation inthe cohort was highly rewarding to receive peer support and understand how other organizations are developing their own impact frameworks.”
Impact Frontiers is a global initiative. The first Impact Frontiers ran from 2018-2020 in the US. This initiative in Canada (2021-2022), co-convened with Rally Assets, built on that important work.
