The International Finance Corporation (IFC), part of the World Bank Group, has just released a new report on impact investing. The new report is titled Growing Impact – New Insights into the Practice of Impact Investing and follows last year’s report Creating Impact: The Promise of Impact Investing.

The report shows that impact investing in private markets could be as large as $ 2.1 trillion in assets under management, but only a quarter of that, $ 505 billion, is clearly measured for its impact, both for development impact and financial returns.

The report also highlights the enormous potential to invest for impact in public equity markets. Today, assets totalling about $ 10 trillion are actively managed and these strategies could be directed toward achieving impact. The publication includes trends in impact investing, survey results of investor practices, and 32 case stories from signatories to the Operating Principles for Impact Management on how they are implementing them.

Cooperation with the Graduate Institute’s Centre for Finance and Development

In which ways can markets and firms make a difference at a scale that substantially reduces poverty? This is a question both the IFC and the Graduate Institute's Centre for Finance and Development (CFD) have been interested in in recent years. Both institutions have been doing research on questions related to impact investment.

In December 2019, the IFC and CFD have co-organised the 1st Annual Conference of the Private Sector Development Research Network on the topic Private Enterprise and Inclusion. At this conference, researchers and staff from different development finance institutions (DFIs) came together to discuss how investment in private enterprises is most socially beneficial and how those benefits can be measured.