ImpactAlpha Podcasts

Lower-than-expected risk. Higher-than-expected impact. Access to off-grid electricity is emerging as an impact investing success story across the developing world.

The impact investing community seems to be in one of its cyclical discussions about who and what should count as impact. The latest Returns on Investment podcast takes up the growing concern about “impact-washing,” the use of impact jargon or marketing to raise money or burnish reputations without delivering real impact or, in some cases, causing negative impacts.

What will it take for investors to make the big bets? ImpactAlpha’s latest Returns on Investment podcast took on what roundtable regular Imogen Rose-Smith, an investment fellow at the University of California, called “the disconnect between rhetoric and reality.”

The latest Returns on Investment podcast takes up the case of the $1 billion Abraaj Growth Markets Health Fund and impact investing failures more broadly. The health fund, which was pursuing an ambitious effort to build comprehensive healthcare networks in the megacities of the 21st century – think Lagos and Karachi and Mumbai – is now embroiled in the larger scandal that has engulfed Abraaj Group.

Impact investing types, it seems, are proud globalists. That optimistic, connected, cross-border approach to challenges, solutions and human relationships puts them in a unique position in this peculiar historic moment when walls are going up and strangers are suspect. At the same time, the essential precondition of investing – having capital to invest – means most investors are largely distant from the lived experience of many of the people their investments are purported to benefit. ImpactAlpha's roundtable regulars take on the contradictions of globalism. (Photo: Top view of 1765 de l'Isle globe A 1765 de l'Isle globe, showing top view. Collection of the Minnesota Historical Society.)

In the latest Returns on Investment podcast, our roundtable regulars take up the April memo from the Department of Labor that tried, albeit weakly, to walk back the Obama-era guidance about how fiduciaries could consider ESG factors.

The obsession with financial returns that for decades kept major institutional investors away is now pushing them towards a serious accounting of environmental risks. Ashby Monk joins Dave Chen, the chair of Equilibrium Capital, and David Bank, editor of Impact Alpha, on this episode of Returns on Investment: Institutional Shift.

A few years ago the Prudential Foundation committed to reaching a billion dollar impact portfolio by 2020, and they're well on their way to reaching that goal. On this episode of ROI, David Bank sits down with Lata Reddy, the Senior Vice President of Diversity, Inclusion & Impact at Prudential Financial and Chair and President of The Prudential Foundation to discuss the impact fund, their place based investing strategy, and the role of mission investing in the fight for social justice.

If impact investors are worth their salt, they’ll soon –– if not soon enough –– come up with a whole raft of investible solutions to the crushing burden of opioid addiction. The problem may have snuck up over the past decade, but there’s no escaping the costs of the crisis now. As many as 23 million addicts in the U.S. More than 64,000 overdose deaths, most of them opioid-related. The annual economic cost: an estimated $193 billion. On this episode of ROI, our panel discusses where impact investors can have a role in tackling the issue of opioid addiction.

Corporate venture capital is a thing. And that thing is converging on impact investing. The amount that global corporations put into strategic investments in startup companies last year reached $31 billion across 1800 deals, both all-time records. Today on the podcast David Bank, Imogen Rose-Smith and Brian Walsh discuss Corporate Venture Capital and Impact.