Future Returns: How Impact Investors Balance Objectives

“What’s important here, and what we’re delighted about, is that financial performance is an important consideration for impact investors, but they are really looking at it taking into account a number of considerations,” says Dean Hand, director of research at the GIIN.

To weigh impact alongside performance is not unusual in the sense that traditional market investors also weigh a number of things. Risk and return, for instance, are factors commonly taken into consideration in balance with one another.

To invest in an emerging market company might lead to higher returns than a similar investment in a U.S. firm, but it’s riskier, bearing a higher potential of falling apart, so investors have to decide how much risk they are willing to stomach to get the returns they want.

The GIIN’s survey results have shown that impact investors generally get the balance they are seeking—nearly 88% in the most recent survey say that their portfolios meet or exceed their expectations for returns.

But when investors care about creating a positive social or environmental impact, they also weigh traditional investment considerations, such as liquidity—do they need their investment cash back soon or can they wait? If the latter, an investor may be more willing to invest in a private equity fund with a longer time horizon, and a different set of impact outcomes than might be available via a green bond, for instance.

If they are a more conservative investor, too, not willing to shoulder a lot of risk—a highly rated green bond may be just the thing.

The Importance of Manager Selection

The GIIN’s report looked at how impact investments in private markets have performed, culling data from available research by groups such as Cambridge Associates and Symbiotics as well as its own investor survey.

Private-equity impact investments, for instance, can deliver high returns, outperforming the S&P 500 index by 15%, according to a study by the International Finance Corp., although a University of California study found the median impact fund had an internal rate of return (IRR) of 6.4% compared with 7.4% for the median “impact-agnostic” fund.

And results can vary widely. The GIIN’s survey data showed that the top 10% of private-equity portfolios in emerging markets had realized returns of more than 29% while the bottom 10% had returns below 6%.

As a result, the GIIN finds that fund manager selection matters, not just in terms of quality, Hand says, but in helping the investor understand “whether or not they are achieving what they want both in terms of financial performance and impact performance.”

Investors also have to ask the right questions, Hand says. For example, it’s important to ask questions like: What specific impact results a manager is getting? How are those results measured? How do you convey this information to investors?

Where these have been successful, particularly in impact investing, is where the AO and AM work together to derive what results they are looking for, what their objectives are, and how they are going to report on those results.

“Good asset-owner and asset-manager relationships are built on a close working relationship,” Hand says. “Where these have been successful, particularly in impact investing, is where the asset owner and asset manager work together to derive what results they are looking for, what their objectives are, and how they are going to report on those results.”

Performance in Private Debt, Real Assets

According to the report, private debt funds focused on impact have tended to provide low-risk returns, as most investors expect, while delivering stability as well as diversification to impact portfolios.

The GIIN survey data showed average returns for impact debt funds ranged from 8% for developed market funds to 11% for emerging market funds, while Symbiotics data found a weighted average yield of 7.6% for fixed-income impact funds, the report said.

Investing in real assets, such as real estate and timberland, can lead to good returns, but the results vary widely depending on the time horizon as well as the type of investment, the report found. Investors surveyed by the GIIN reported returns ranging from 8% to 23%—again, pointing to the need for investors to select the right asset managers.

Case Studies

To give a sense of how experienced impact investors balance all these factors, the report offers examples from five experienced impact investors.

IDP Foundation, a private nonprofit focused on access to education and poverty alleviation, invests for impact from its endowment as well as through program-related investments. The foundation cares about achieving high impact but also competitive, market-rate financial returns.

The GIIN looked at five major factors the foundation weighs before deciding on an investment: financial return objectives, impact objectives, financial risk, impact risk, resource capacity, and liquidity constraints.

It turns out IDP considers its financial return and impact objectives to be “very important,” while financial risk—or the volatility of expected returns—and impact risk are “important.” The foundation’s resource capacity is less important, as it leans on a consulting firm as an advisor, and screen service to make sure it doesn’t invest in anything that violates its impact goals.

“What we hope by these spotlights is that it will give investors an idea of how those things are actually playing out so they can match that in their own decision making,” Hand says.