Impact Investing. The Future of Investing?

Seminar paper from the year 2017 in the subject Business economics - Investment and Finance, grade: 1,0, , language: English, abstract: Throughout the last decades, the global society has increasingly been debating about our responsibility to act in a sustainable and socially acceptable manner, both from a private and a corporate point of view. Over the course of this very discussion, governments, organizations and numerous institutions began to, among others, advocate sustainable energies such as wind and solar power in order to counteract the destruction and global warming of our planet. Since then, also a large part of the companies around the globe have changed their self-concept, moving away from the conception of reckless businesses that are solely being after the maximum profit in everything they do, and striving after the perception of caring yet economically successful enterprises that support both their employees and their (social) environment. As a matter of fact, the so-called corporate social responsibility has become a major aspect on how potential employees or clients assess a company's value nowadays. And as part of this development many enterprises - first and foremost banks and other financial institutions - have, at least to some extent, adjusted their investing behavior as well, representing social awareness and creating additional value through a wide variety of social and/ or sustainable investments. The concept of impact investing - providing a social value alongside a financial return - has, therefore, become a familiar face in the financial sector and might be a considerable help in realizing global sustainability objectives, e.g. the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations.

This analysis imparts a holistic introduction into the relatively young yet comprehensive topic and ultimately investigates the question to what extent impact investing could play a leading role in the future of investing. This paper is divided into another 5 chapters that are organized as follows: Chapter 2 deals with the definition and classification, but also with contemporary issues of Impact Investing. Chapter 3 provides a general framework for defining and developing a personalized impact portfolio profile, whereas Chapter 4 makes an approach to model the latter while referring to traditional static modeling approaches. Chapter 5 attends to the empirical performance of both SRI and impact portfolios in comparison with "traditional" benchmarks. Finally, chapter 6 concludes and, on the basis of this research, gives a future prospect.