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Impact Investing continues to garner a lot of attention, at Davos, at the Clinton Global Initiative, at the G8 Summit, and at social enterprises big and small. But it’s still having little financial impact. For now, big institutional investors are not participating. Until they do, impact investing will remain small.
Sure, the potential is still there, but it’s not growing as fast as many people anticipated a few years ago. According to the Global Impact Investing Network, impact investors committed about $8 billion in 2012, and they are expected to invest $9 billion in 2013. Not exactly explosive growth. That’s in contrast with the $13 trillion overall company marketplace. In other words, a drop in the bucket.
As mentioned in an earlier blog, community development financial institutions (CDFIs), which have been around for decades, still represent the lion’s share of the impact investing pie.
That said, stay tuned, as it is growing, and there’s every reason to believe it will continue to grow, just on a slower trend line.
Here’s more information on this from a recent Bloomberg BusinessWeek article.
What do you think?
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