Overcoming barriers to scale : Institutional impact investments in low-income and developing countries

Social impact: The effect of an activity on the social fabric of the community and well-being of the individuals and families. [...] The use of economically targeted investing by pension funds in the United States and the use of the Mubdala Fund to finance the development of Masdar City in Abu Dhabi are some examples. [...] The value of this ecosystem approach is in the linkages that it makes between the government and financial industry activities and in identifying the areas that may be lacking and thus causing barriers to the full scaling of the impact sector. [...] Composed of five main assessment areas, as depicted in the framework below, the main objective of the tool is to allow investors and policy-makers to assess the quality, strength and size of a country’s impact investment pipeline. [...] Additional financial parameters that the fund might consider include the type of financial instruments, the geographies and sectors of focus, the growth stage and scalability of the enterprise, and the risk appetite of the investor.