Opinion

Impact Week Insights for Capital Providers

A quick roundup from Inรจs Mertens, Impact Funds Lead at Impact Europe.

Inรจs Mertens |
Impact Week Insights for Capital Providers
ยฉ Diputaciรณn Foral de Bizkaia

What an impactful week in Bilbao! We kicked off with the ๐ˆ๐ฆ๐ฉ๐š๐œ๐ญ ๐„๐ช๐ฎ๐ข๐ญ๐ฒ ๐…๐จ๐ซ๐ฎ๐ฆ, organised by the European Investment Fund (EIF) and European Investment Bank (EIB) Advisory. Over 140 European impact VC leaders gathered to discuss the evolution of the impact investing market.

I had the pleasure of debating alongside David Frykman (Norrsken), Johannes Weber (Ananda), and Johannes P. Weber (BMW Foundation) and nicely moderated by Katrina Sichel, exploring how the market has evolved and whatโ€™s needed to shape its future. One thing is clear: we need innovative financial instruments to fund social investments.

>Did you know 68% of EIF-backed funds are focused on environmental challenges, leaving a significant funding gap for social investments?
>A hint for foundations and corporates: could this be the moment to create a pooled fund to support social impact fund managers?

We also heard from Antje Biber from FERI (Schweiz) AG, who highlighted the need for a ๐ซ๐ž๐ ๐ฎ๐ฅ๐š๐ญ๐จ๐ซ๐ฒ ๐ฌ๐š๐ง๐๐›๐จ๐ฑ that allows pension funds to experiment with higher-risk investments, including VC and impact investments.

Following this, we joined ๐ˆ๐ฆ๐ฉ๐š๐œ๐ญ ๐–๐ž๐ž๐ค, celebrating Impact Europeโ€™s 20th anniversary! Itโ€™s been an incredible journey shaping the venture philanthropy and impact investing market. Iโ€™m humbled to contribute to this organisation, whose role in building the impact ecosystem has been pivotal. Huge shoutout to the pioneers who paved the way โ€” Doug Miller!

Next steps

The ๐„๐ฎ๐ซ๐จ๐ฉ๐ž๐š๐ง ๐ข๐ฆ๐ฉ๐š๐œ๐ญ ๐ข๐ง๐ฏ๐ž๐ฌ๐ญ๐ข๐ง๐  ๐ฆ๐š๐ซ๐ค๐ž๐ญ โ€” spanning direct and indirect investments in unlisted assets โ€” has grown from โ‚ฌ80 billion to โ‚ฌ190 billion in just two years. Yet, it still represents only ๐Ÿ.๐Ÿ“% of the โ‚ฌ7.6 trillion of AUM eligible for impact investing in Europe. Read The Size of Impact for more context and more key insights on the size of the European market.

Now, more than ever, we need to be ๐๐Ž๐‹๐ƒ and ๐๐‘๐ˆ๐†๐‡๐“, breaking barriers and bringing impact to the forefront of investments. Letโ€™s keep pushing forward โ€” together!

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This article first appeared as a LinkedIn post.