Impact Investing Conference

Christina “CJ” Juhasz addressed the issue of gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls, considered to be crucial for progressing across all the United Nations’ sustainable development goals.

In her capacity as the Chief Investment Officer of Women’s World Banking Asset Management, the investment arm of Women’s World Banking (WWB), a global network of microfinance institutions committed to ensuring that poor women have access to financial services, Christina Juhasz perfectly knows the legal, social and economic barriers that still have to be removed to meet this target.

When managing the organisation’s Capital Partners Fund, she directed equity investment into WBB’s network members and other women-focused microfinance institutions in order to provide them with responsible growth capital. As Chief Investment Officer, Ms. Juhasz raised over $30 million from institutional and high-net-worth investors to launch the WWB Isis Fund, the first and only women-focused microfinance private equity fund.

In a powerful speech, Thai entrepreneur Arvind Narula, founder, owner and CEO of Urmatt Group, the world’s leading supplier of organic jasmine rice, delivered the proof that fair trade and organic operations can be scalable, impactful and profitable.

From the very beginning of his initiative to launch a high-value rice business in 1982, Arvind Narula partnered with the poorest farmers and workers and committed to adding value to the local communities. Very soon afterwards, he made the switch from conventional to 100% organic farming, which proved to make his operations even more profitable.

Since then, Arvind’s rice business has grown into a fully integrated global agricultural organization that provides organic rice, chia, coconut and other agricultural products around the world while, at the same time, empowering more than 1,000 farmer families.

Alison Fort, Acting CEO and Managing Director Europe of Toniic, demonstrated that it is a myth that impact investors aren’t as concerned about financial returns.

The findings of a multi-year study of more than 50 impact investment portfolios conducted by Toniic, the global action community for impact investors, show that investors’ primary motivation is to invest with measurable impact and that their financial motivation is generally the same as the one of traditional investors: to preserve capital and generate a financial return for the asset owner.

Today, it is perfectly possible to construct 100% impact portfolios, and the available range of impact investments is much wider than previously understood. Geography is no barrier, nor are particular causes or themes. Further to this, investing one’s capital for impact alongside financial returns is not just the domain of wealthy millennials.

Alison explained why intentionality is the key ingredient of impact investments and how impact intentionality can be applied across all asset classes available to traditional investors.

Can a positive environmental, social and governance impact be synergetic with strong performance?

Senior Fund Partner Jochen Wermuth and his partners at Wermuth Asset Management GmbH prove it can. With their family office and investment advisory firm, they attract capital and contribute to move trillions of euros into resource-efficient companies and renewable power needed to stop climate change.

Since February, they have an important “ally”: On the occasion of Pope Francis’ 80th birthday, Jochen Wermuth and The Mobility House, a start-up specialised in innovative charging and energy storage solutions he is invested in, provided the spiritual leader with an electric car that he will use for one year as part of a pilot project to promote a clean-energy future, laying the foundations for an emission-free mobility state. The Vatican seeks indeed to become the first state in the world to be fully powered by renewable energy.

Jochen Wermuth will make an introductory speech and moderate the panel discussion on Climate Finance Opportunities at ALFI’s 2017 Impact Investing Conference.