NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

SINGAPORE: Investing with a social cause has caught on in Asia. Some 400 participants gathered in Singapore for an inaugural forum on impact investing.

The forum, co-hosted by Singapore-based social enterprise Impact Investment Shujog and Impact Investment Exchange Asia was supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Asian Development Bank.

The participants in the forum include social entrepreneurs, as well as investors – who are keen to do good for society while making a profit.

Lending to businesses which create jobs for the poor, and funding irrigation infrastructure to help rural folks boost crop yield – these are some examples of investing for social returns, or impact investing.

Wolfgang Hafenmayer, managing partner at LGT Venture Philanthropy, said: “I think we will agree that we will not find a lot of people who’ll say: ’I want to destroy the environment’, ’I want to destroy the social fabric’, ’I want to destroy society by investing for financial profit.’

“Then we should all agree that impact investing should be the only kind of investing that should be allowed, and that we need frameworks which don’t allow people to externalise the negative consequences of our investments.”