Sustainable Alpha: Matthew Kiernan on impact investing

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Kiernan

Sustainable Alpha features shared conversations with the best minds, portfolio managers and industry leaders working to maximize returns while prioritizing the environment, social and governance factors — what’s become short-handed in the industry as ESG. Sustainable Alpha highlights portfolio approaches and investment trends against the backdrop of broader themes such as resource constraints, policy changes and demographic shifts — all while shedding light on how ESG can impact your investments.

Sustainable Alpha conversations are led by John Wrenn, Senior VP, Investments for UBS. The Wrenn Ferguson Group has a combined experience of 200 years managing over 1.6 billion in assets, offering customized wealth management strategies for individuals, endowments and foundations. View the rest of his conversations with leaders in the sustainable investment community.

Here he's talking with Matthew Kiernan, author of the book "Investing in a Sustainable World." Kiernan is the Toronto-based founder and chief executive of Inflection Point Capital Management and the founder of Innovest Strategic Value Advisors Inc., a leader in sustainable investment research, where he also served as chief executive.

John Wrenn: What is impact investing and what do you feel is the next step for investors and why?

Matthew Kiernan: “Impact investing" has to date been defined rather narrowly. According to the orthodox definition, impact investing is typically a small-scale project in the private market, explicitly designed — obviously — to generate positive environmental and/or socio-economic impact. There is also a continuum of approaches where the relative importance of the sustainability impact and the financial return can shift around, depending on the priorities of the particular individual or institution making the investment.