Religious investors put their faith in impact funds
Shunning harmful industries is good. Tackling poverty and injustice is even better
To solve our greatest social and environmental challenges, we need to make more capital impact capital, and more stakeholders impact stakeholders. We teamed up with Financial Times to show that all investors can be impact investors.
FT’s special report looks at funds that put social pay-offs first — from greener energy in Nigeria to new jobs in the UK. Plus: pharma’s funding gap, biodiversity credits, and faith-based finance.
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When the managers of the Church of England’s financial endowment announced plans to set aside funds to right “past wrongs” in January, the news drew attention to a growing but still niche form of investing. Of the £100mn earmarked by the Church Commissioners for restitution of slavery, some would go into impact investment funds — vehicles whose purpose is to achieve social impact, rather than to maximise financial returns.
The Church Commissioners’ investments will become part of a pool of “faith-aligned” impact investment capital that researchers at the Oxford Faith-Aligned Impact Finance (Oxfaif) project have estimated as being worth a total of $5tn worldwide.
