Existe una gran cantidad de interpretaciones de este término, por lo cual hemos compilado las mejores definiciones de la inversión de impacto. Aquí algunas definiciones.
Webinar: Inversión de impacto, Roland Dominicé y Todd Farrington, Symbiotics, 2013.
La inversión de impacto se define como inversiones en empresas, organizaciones y fondos con la intención de generar resultados financieros además de un impacto social medible.
- Es una alternativa sostenible a una donación o la filantropía para generar impacto social medible, además de un retorno financiero.
- Es una manera para corporaciones y programas de RSE de seguir sus metas de responsabilidad social a través de capital empresarial, invirtiendo en pequeñas empresas que producen bienes de primera necesidad, generan ingresos, crean empleos – y últimamente mejoran el ambiente social.
Foro Latinoamericano de inversión de impacto, New Ventures Mexico, 2013.
En términos generales, [la inversión de impacto] consiste en colocar capital de forma activa en empresas y fondos que generan beneficios sociales o ambientales y además son rentables para el inversionista. La inversión de impacto agrupa a aquellas operaciones financieras realizadas por fondos de inversión que colocan grandes montos en proyectos rentables con impacto social o ambiental positivo, es decir, empresas sociales. De esta forma, se apoyan a proyectos con o sin fines de lucro y alto impacto, con volumen de transacciones millonarias y a tasas de interés o condiciones de inversión favorables para los emprendedores.
Inversión de impacto: Reflexiones desde el campo, Next Billion, Araceli Campos Ramirez,2012.
Para el Dr. Michael Chu (IGNIA Foundation) la definición más amplia posible de la inversión de impacto social es la conjunción de tres elementos: 1) la disciplina de la inversión de capital de riesgo 2) implementar intervenciones de alto impacto social 3) obtener por lo menos el retorno de capital. A pesar de que estos tres conceptos no son nuevos, la innovación está en conjuntarlos. La definición precisa de inversión de impacto y todo lo que la rodea es tan diversa como los protagonistas que están en el campo hoy en día. Si miramos a las fuentes de capital, tenemos desde fundaciones y donantes de filantropía hasta inversionistas privados, quienes tratan de llegar a este campo a través de vehículos tan dispares como son deuda, equity, vehículos nuevos e híbridos como social bonds y los que están en proceso de consolidación como los “fondos de fondos” para desplegar capital de inversión de impacto.
What is Impact Investing, Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN), 2009-2013.
Impact investments are investments made into companies, organizations, and funds with the intention to generate measurable social and environmental impact alongside a financial return. Impact investments can be made in both emerging and developed markets, and target a range of returns from below market to market rate, depending upon the circumstances. Impact investors actively seek to place capital in businesses and funds that can harness the positive power of enterprise. A rapidly growing supply of capital is seeking placement in impact investments across geographies, sectors, and asset classes, with a wide range of return expectations. This investment interest is sparking the emergence of a new industry that operates in the largely uncharted area between philanthropy and a singular focus on profit-maximization.
Informe: Mapa de las inversiones de impacto en España, Fundación Compromiso y Transparencia, 2012.
El término de inversiones de impacto, conocido en inglés como Impact Investing, fue acuñado y difundido por primera vez en 2009 por la empresa de consultoría Monitor Group. La definición más aceptada de inversión de impacto es “la de aquellas inversiones de capital en empresas o fondos que generan bienes sociales y/o medioambientales junto a unos retornos para el inversor que pueden ir desde la simple devolución del capital a una rentabilidad igual a la del mercado”.
Si bien el cuadro de motivaciones dentro de la categoría de los inversores de impacto puede ser muy
heterogéneo, todos sus inversores comparten dos características:
- Buscan un retorno financiero –como mínimo del capital invertido– y, por lo tanto, no cabe encuadrar la inversión de impacto en el mundo de la filantropía o de las donaciones a fondo perdido.
- Las inversiones se dirigen expresamente a iniciativas capaces de producir un impacto social. Este objetivo social está explícitamente buscado y, por lo tanto, forma parte de la decisión de inversión.
¿para QUÉ Participar en la INVERSIÓN DE IMPACTO?
The United Nations and Rockefeller Center state in the UN Global Compact, A Framework for Action: Social Enterprise & Impact Investing (pp 4-7, 2013) that “at the institutional level, asset managers are observing increasing demand from asset owners for socially and environmentally beneficial investment options. In order to attract and retain clients who express such a demand, institutional asset managers should begin to create relevant investment offerings.”
The Compact also indicates that “impact investing serves as an attractive way for corporations to work towards achieving their internally developed sustainable development goals as well as advancing universally accepted principles, such as those set forth by the UN Global Compact in the areas of human rights, labour, environment and anticorruption. Given the significant scalability and self-propelling growth of many for-profit social enterprises, these businesses have the potential to create more widespread social and environmental impact than less scalable initiatives.”
According to the webpage What is Impact Investing by the Global Impact Investing Ratings System (GIIRS, 2012), a “chorus of prominent voices is calling for business to play a proactive role in addressing social and environmental challenges at scale: Bill Gates calls for ‘creative capitalism’, Tom Friedman calls for a ‘green economy’, Al Gore and David Blood call for the ‘sustainable corporation’, and Muhammad Yunus calls for ‘social business’. The sustainable capitalism called for by these thought leaders already exists in a fragmented form today. However, a fragmented market is not capable of growing the number and scale of companies, nor can it attract significant institutional capital. This requires defining an ‘impact investing’ asset class and accelerating the emergence of new capital markets that support appropriate investment vehicles.”
The site goes on to state that “the Monitor Institute’s recent report on “Investing for Social & Environmental Impact” estimates that Impact Investing has the potential to grow to about 1% of total managed assets, which would result in about $500 B of capital channeled toward social and environmental impact.”
And finally, in its article Harnessing the Power of Impact Investing, The Rockefeller Foundation (2013) states that “It’s going to take far more money than all the philanthropies and governments have at their disposal to make a significant impact on improving the lives of all the poor and vulnerable people in the world. Impact Investing— which helps address social and/or environmental problems while also turning a profit—could unlock substantial for-profit investment capital to complement philanthropy in addressing pressing social challenges.”
inversión de Impacto: INDICADORES y Normas
IRIS Impact Reporting & Investment Standards
A growing community of impact investors, who deliberately invest for social and environmental impact, cannot fully evaluate impact investments with financial performance data alone. Though numerous organizations have developed their own social and environmental performance metrics, the resulting fragmentation is inefficient and expensive, and also limits comparability.
IRIS was developed to provide a common reporting language for impact-related terms and metrics. By standardizing the way organizations communicate and report their social and environmental performance, IRIS aims to increase the value of non-financial data by enabling performance comparisons and benchmarking, while also streamlining and simplifying reporting requirements for companies and their investors.
IRIS users and value proposition: IRIS provides value to many key stakeholders in the impact investing industry:
- Investors in Funds: As more investors dedicate a portion of their portfolios to mission-driven funds, they are demanding data about the social and environmental impact of their investments. IRIS provides a credible set of standards that can be applied across multiple sectors and geographies to serve as the basis for impact reporting by funds. For information about how some investors have adopted IRIS, read here.
- Direct Investors: Using IRIS standards enables direct investors to credibly track and report the social and environmental performance of their portfolio companies. Using IRIS also allows investors to compare the performance of an individual company with other companies across the industry that have also adopted IRIS. For information about how funds have adopted IRIS, read here.
- Companies: Companies raising capital can attract impact investors by measuring and reporting both financial and non-financial performance. IRIS provides an objective set of performance measures that are compatible with many existing reporting standards so that alignment is straightforward and low-cost. For more information about how companies have adopted IRIS, read here.
- Member organizations/Intermediaries: Member organizations can use IRIS as the basis for a shared reporting framework to assess their individual member and aggregate impacts. For more information, read about the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs’ adoption of IRIS here.
Global Impact Investment Rating System (GIIRS)
GIIRS is a comprehensive and transparent system for assessing the social and environmental impact of developed and emerging market companies and funds with a ratings and analytics approach analogous to Morningstar investment rankings and Capital IQ financial analytics. GIIRS is uniquely positioned in the impact investing marketplace because it is the only entity that has: a focus on the impact performance of private companies; that uses a cross-industry and cross-geographic methodology; and that provides transparent, independent, and verified data. GIIRS is a hybrid private/public good in that while it charges for its services in order to become sustainable, it is a non-profit entity that publishes data for public use and educates/advocates about impact investing and impact metrics, and it maintains transparent standards and an assessment tool that can be used by anyone for internal use for free.
Fuente: Innovacional
