An Australian entrepreneur-turned-philanthropist, Killelea founded the software firm Integrated Research (IR) in 1988, later listing it on the Australian Securities Exchange in 2000. He retired from the company in 2018 to focus on philanthropy.
Besides the IEP, Killelea also set up The Charitable Foundation, one of Australia’s largest private overseas aid donors.
Speaking at the AVPN Southeast Asia Summit 2025 on Feb 25, Killelea says peace is necessary for the human race to conquer existential challenges. “Peace is a prerequisite for the survival of society as we know it in the 21st century. The past may have been the domain of the altruistic, but in the 21st century, it’s literally in everyone’s self-interest.”
Adding to this, fellow panellist Ng Boon Heong, CEO of Temasek Foundation, underscores that peace is the bedrock of people, planet and prosperity.
See also: Investing in war: a call to arms for defence stocks
He cites a 2022 speech by Ho Ching, chairman of Temasek Trust: “Without peace, children cannot go to school, and the sick cannot access medical treatment. Without peace, we cannot plan and build long-term infrastructure — not just hard infrastructure like fibre and satellite networks, but also important soft infrastructure like open and objective judicial systems, accessible and inclusive education, or a just and pragmatic transition with a future-ready workforce.”
Ho’s speech, which she delivered at the start of the Philanthropy Asia Summit 2022, goes on to include: “Peace is rather elusive too. There is no clear blueprint for success.”
Investing for peace
See also: Investing for impact? Learn these lessons from ESG investing
“It’s easier to start a war than to end it,” said the late Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez. The same can be said about investing.
This week’s cover story is the second in a two-part series. Last week’s feature on “investing in war” explored the ethics of holding defence stocks amid current tensions, along with a global roundup of stock picks.
Investing in peace is complex — covering areas like international relations, health, well-being, equality and sustainability — drawing various investors and financial institutions.
This is also a follow-up to The Edge Singapore’s impact investing cover story from April 2024 (Issue 1132: Impact Investing: Hero or Zero?), which explored the continuum of capital, a spectrum ranging from responsible investing to venture philanthropy.
The continuum illustrates various parties’ expectations of returns, impact and risk on a sliding scale, assigning labels to multiple groups in the market today.
As more institutions enter the space, however, they bring with them various mandates and preferences. Venture capital (VC) firms identifying impactful start-ups and asset managers refining their engagement strategies, for example, are blurring the distinct buckets within the continuum of capital.
See also: ‘A time of great uncertainty’ for the philanthropy sector: AVPN CEO
This cover features some of these newer entrants and their motivations, along with innovative financing structures being adopted by the world’s largest financial institutions.
Local VC to fund scholarships
Initial forays into philanthropy may serve a broader, long-term purpose for profit-driven firms. Singapore-based VC firm Trirec recently announced plans to launch its non-profit arm, promising to channel a portion of its profits into funding scholarships, bursaries, research grants, thought leadership programmes and other climate-focused non-profit organisations.
Melvyn Yeo, Trirec’s founder and managing partner, says the firm is in talks with two local universities to set up scholarships and bursaries in fields like chemical engineering, material science and theoretical physics.
“The intention,” says Yeo, “is really to energise and excite people to go into certain fields that we feel are lacking [graduates].”
Trirec has a mandate to invest in companies around the world that focus on decarbonisation. Since 2015, it has invested in more than 20 companies across three funds. Its first fund, which closed at US$75 million in 2022, saw three exits in Southeast Asia. Its second fund, which closed at US$80 million in 2023, saw its first unicorn, Xpansiv, a market infrastructure platform for carbon and environmental commodities.
Trirec also invested in Sunseap Group, now owned by Spanish renewable energy firm EDP Renewables; and US-based nuclear fusion designer Type One Energy.
Trirec has promised to release more details on its non-profit arm soon. In a way, the VC is also looking out for itself by identifying future founders and staffing its portfolio companies.
“We hope to not just give out scholarships and see you later, but we hope to connect them with our start-ups and our ecosystem, where perhaps they will be doing internships,” says Yeo. “Hopefully, they get similarly inspired that it’s not just academics, but they say, ‘Oh, well, these are the possibilities.’ Then hopefully, either they get a job with the start-ups, or they get inspired and go back and do research, right and maybe [form] their own start-up.”
Catalytic investments
Another investor lays claims to the “impact investing” title by acting as a “scale-up capital partner” to growth-stage companies that are solving “some of the world’s biggest social and environmental challenges”.
Catalyst is M&G’s impact investing arm, launched in January 2021 with a GBP5 billion investment. M&G demerged from Prudential in 2019.
Catalyst closed four deals in Apac last year. The firm invested approximately US$25 million ($33.56 million) into Indian water purifier manufacturer Livpure in August 2024 and US$50 million into Singapore-headquartered digital banking firm Tyme Group in December 2024. The latter is currently present in South Africa and the Philippines with over 15 million customers.
Catalyst’s other investments in the region are the hyperspectral imaging start-up Pixxel and Indian commercial electric vehicle manufacturer Montra Electric.
Praveg Patil, head of Asia Pacific (Apac), impact and private equity at M&G, says Pixxel is a climate play as it monitors “critical resources” like water, air and soil from space, and flags the impact of human expansion.
“[Pixxel] allows large customers to monitor the health of water bodies. If it’s [an] offshore oil rig, you can monitor oil leaks, for example. If you’re a large agri[culture] grower, you can monitor the health of soil. Same with mining, you can monitor the health of resources and biodiversity.”
Within Apac, Patil says Catalyst’s investments “resonate very strongly” around two themes: climate solutions and financial inclusion and access. The value proposition of the company doubles as the impact measurement metric, he adds. “It’s tightly aligned. It can’t be like something like a sideshow, right? It has to be very core to what the business does.”
Patil, who joined M&G in 2011 and is now based in Singapore, divides the Apac region into four key blocs, each focusing on specific countries: Singapore and Southeast Asia; India; Australia and New Zealand; and Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. Within these regions, Patil’s team is currently targeting opportunities in healthcare and supply chain resilience.
“We think healthcare remains under-penetrated; there are still pockets of society that need that access to healthcare,” he tells The Edge Singapore. “There are large supply chains, which continue to get disrupted because of all the things which are happening around the world. We think there might be interesting pockets of opportunity for us to invest given the population demographic [changes] Apac is going through.”
In many ways, Catalyst operates like a typical VC, and the impact of its investments fits a broader definition of the investing style. But Patil thinks his firm’s brand name offers it a competitive edge.
Compared to how much dry powder was available among growth funds in 2021, when Catalyst was launched, Patil thinks there has been a “flight to quality from the founder community” towards his firm.
“Fast-forward four years, where we’ve been obviously very selective, we can now stand out as probably one of the largest global impact-focused investors,” he adds. “What we can bring to the table is completely different from a traditional buy-side VC or a growth investor.”
The ABCs of impact
ABC Impact, a division of Temasek Trust Asset Management, prides itself on its impact measurement capabilities. Chief impact officer Sugandhi Matta says the past year has “reinforced” the belief that impact must be “tangible, measurable and deeply aligned with enterprise value”. “It is not an abstract ideal, but a key driver of resilience, innovation and long-term growth.”
The impact investor showcases stunning figures in its annual “impact review”. According to the 2024 edition, released on March 27, its portfolio companies supplied some 37.9 million people with “essential services” under its “better health and education” investment theme, up 40.1% y-o-y.
Compared to ABC Impact’s 2023 report, the investor provided close to 3.5 million patients with healthcare services, up 20% y-o-y; and 17.5 million students with access to digital education content, up 46% y-o-y.
Apart from health and education, ABC Impact also invests in financial and digital inclusion, climate and water solutions, and sustainable food and agriculture; each of these is backed up with its own specific metrics.
Some highlights include the 5.7 million individuals and micro-enterprises that have gained access to financial services, up 40% y-o-y; and close to 2 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions avoided, up 19% y-o-y.
“ABC Impact commits to assessing impact with the same rigour as financial performance, ensuring that our investments deliver both measurable outcomes and sustainable value,” says Matta.
ABC Impact launched its second impact fund in August 2023. The ABC Impact Fund II closed last year at US$600 million, double the size of its inaugural fund.
In 2024, ABC Impact added two companies to its portfolio by leading an approximately US$30 million round into Aye Finance and investing US$50 million into Tekoma Energy.
Based in India, Aye Finance has assets under management (AUM) of US$600 million and 499 branches serving over half a million underbanked micro-, small- and medium-sized business owners. Approximately 38% of its borrowers are new to credit, entering the formal financial system for the first time.
Aye Finance also offers “shakti loans” — collateral-free financial products designed specifically for small, women-owned businesses. “These loans empower women and marginalised communities by fostering entrepreneurship and driving economic growth,” says ABC Impact.
Meanwhile, Tekoma Energy is a renewable power developer based in Tokyo, specialising in photovoltaic solar across Northern Asia. The firm is aiming for a 400-megawatt (MW) solar portfolio within four years.
“Aye Finance is breaking barriers to financial inclusion in India, providing small and underserved businesses with access to credit, which is critical for driving local economic growth and employment,” says chief investment officer Tan Shao Ming. “Tekoma Energy exemplifies ABC Impact’s dedication to accelerating the global energy transition. By investing in Tekoma, we are contributing to the fight against climate change while enabling cleaner, more reliable energy access across the region.”
ABC Impact has engaged New York-based BlueMark, an independent third-party verifier, to assess and validate its impact management practices with the Operating Principles for Impact Management, a global framework. The investor says BlueMark has successfully assured both Fund I and Fund II, confirming alignment with industry best practices.
“As global conversations around climate action, diversity and sustainability evolve, so too must the way we define and measure impact,” says Matta. “There is a clear shift toward pragmatic, solutions-driven approaches, particularly in Asia, where the effectiveness of impact is judged by its ability to generate economic participation and resilience.”
Institutional clients eager to learn
Larger investors also seek more proof that their money is driving meaningful change. According to the sustainability head at UK investment firm Aberdeen Group, institutional clients are demanding greater engagement with the companies they invest in.
“We’re all becoming a bit more sophisticated, particularly around climate change, and understand it’s one thing to decarbonise your portfolio, but that’s just a paper reduction in emissions. What is actually important is achieving real-world emissions reductions,” says Danielle Welsh-Rose, deputy chief sustainability officer, investments at Aberdeen.
Greater demand for engagement means more work for Aberdeen. In addition, a pushback against ESG in the US further complicates things.
“It would put more burden on engagement, particularly if we truly see — which is what we’re expecting to see — US companies disclosing less around some ESG metrics,” says Welsh-Rose, who is based in Australia. “We know [climate change] is a material financial risk; if we don’t have the disclosures that we need in a public realm from these companies, we still need to understand what they’re doing, and so then the alternative is that we have to do more engagement.”
In the midst of creating bespoke sustainability investment approaches for institutional clients, Aberdeen also advised an Australian super fund, a retirement savings scheme where employers contribute a portion of an employee’s income.
In addition to putting this particular fund’s equities portfolio through a climate scenario analysis framework, Aberdeen spent “hours every week” advising the fund managers on climate modelling, says Welsh-Rose. “Essentially, what they’re looking for is to understand whether a company would have an evaluation impairment or uplift under different climate scenarios.”
This client has been extremely earnest in its climate journey, says Welsh-Rose. “One of the reasons that they engaged us and not another provider was that they were really keen to get that knowledge transfer [for] their team. They have their strategy team, risk team [and] quant people in the room to really understand at the granular level, not just looking at the results [or] the end product, but understanding the process of the [climate] modelling.”
By involving a range of staff from outside the sustainability functions, this client raised “really gnarly questions” that challenged Aberdeen’s process and helped refine their methods, adds Welsh-Rose. “It’s definitely a two-way partnership; we both benefitted from that, and they ended up with that knowledge transfer… and they had full confidence to present that to their investment committee. They really were able to stand behind it and say: ‘We understand it and we have confidence in the process, and this is investment decision-useful information.’”
BlackRock’s blended finance tie-ups
Existing stakeholders in sustainable and impact investing have also pioneered new financing structures to achieve a double bottom line.
BlackRock, a pre-eminent name not only for its size as the world’s largest asset manager but also for its role as a first-mover, has been at the forefront of innovative sustainable financing structures such as blended finance.
Blended finance is a strategic way to combine different types of funding from sources like governments, philanthropists and the private sector. Proponents believe bringing together money with varying risk levels helps increase private sector investment in sustainable development.
In 2022, BlackRock closed the Climate Finance Partnership (CFP), a partnership with the governments of France, Germany and Japan, alongside US impact organisations, dedicated to accelerating the flow of capital into renewable energy infrastructure across emerging markets.
BlackRock announced at COP26 in November 2021 that fundraising had reached US$673 million. Under the CFP’s blended finance structure, governments contributed concessional or catalytic capital, while BlackRock brought in institutional or commercial capital. CFP’s current investments include utility-scale solar in various Southeast Asian countries, Kenya’s largest wind farm and an integrated renewable utility in Brazil.
While there is still some hesitation among industry players about the viability of blended finance projects, BlackRock’s Heidi Yip calls the CFP a “success story” that serves as a precedent for future emerging market projects.
Yip joined BlackRock from GIC in February 2024, becoming head of sustainable and transition solutions for Southeast Asia. After a year in the role, Yip’s job scope expanded in February to encompass the entire Asia ex-Japan region.
BlackRock has “proven the equity case”, and it is now working on the debt capital markets, says Yip.
In April 2024, BlackRock announced a partnership with the Insurance Development Forum (IDF) to mobilise insurance sector investment into climate resilience-related infrastructure.
A blueprint developed by IDF seeks to create a pipeline of infrastructure projects that match insurance sector investment requirements and mobilise insurers to invest in developing “smaller to mid-size” infrastructure projects in developing and emerging markets.
Yip says there is a “market gap” in this area. “We haven’t seen capital flow into infrastructure in Southeast Asia at a level proportionate to what we have seen into developed markets.”
Speaking to The Edge Singapore, she says the hesitation by institutional clients to allocate to this market could be partly attributed to the “real or perceived risk” of investing in emerging markets not being commensurate with the returns.
“Blended finance is one way where we can bring in other capital providers that are able to take more or different forms of risk, or are not looking at returns alone, but for additionality or the mobilisation of capital, or other impact. [This will] allow institutional investors to participate at the level of risk-returns that they can take on,” says Yip.
The move also introduces Southeast Asia to institutional clients that prefer developed market products. “The thinking here is that once they have invested through us and understand a bit more about the market and the nature of opportunities here, then their perception of whether there is that extent of risk would be improved,” Yip adds.
As precedent grows, so will institutional or commercial interest in such projects, reducing the reliance on the blended finance model. “In future rounds when we are looking at similar sectors [or] geography, the amount of concessional capital needed in a blended structure would not be as high,” says Yip.
BlackRock is also working on another blended finance debt initiative, this time with the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).
At COP29 in November 2024, the two parties signed a statement of intent (SOI) with the International Finance Corporation, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Nippon Export and Investment Insurance and AIA Group to explore ways to work together on a blended finance debt initiative to attract global investors “seeking opportunities to finance corporates’ decarbonisation projects at scale in Asia with a focus on Southeast Asia”.
This “Industrial Transformation infrastructure debt programme” is one of the programmes under Financing Asia’s Transition Partnership (Fast-P), a blended finance initiative announced by the Singapore government in December 2023.
Fast-P aims to mobilise up to US$5 billion from public, private and philanthropic partners to finance transition opportunities in Southeast Asia.
Under the SOI, the parties will explore “mutually beneficial opportunities” to provide debt financing to private sector borrowers seeking to decarbonise their businesses, including projects in hard-to-abate sectors, technology solutions for the low-carbon transformation, and industrial opportunities.
Blended finance has been around for a long time, says Yip, but mostly implemented at the “project level”. “It is difficult to scale when the fund manager needs to source different pools of capital and expertise [and] also negotiate all the different terms and investment or participation objectives project by project… You can spend many years just negotiating funding, alignment of interests and objectives for one project, and then when you’re done funding that, you’re looking at the next project [and] it starts all over again, because you have to look for a new, different set of stakeholders.”
The “realisation” that has taken place across the industry is the need for scale, adds Yip. “What BlackRock is trying to do is create blended finance structures at the portfolio level… It provides scalability because the management of that risk and a blending of risk capital is done within the fund rather than at a project level.”
Yip, who has worked in various public and private sector firms like Singapore’s Ministry of Finance, JP Morgan, McKinsey & Company and Standard Chartered Bank, says: “The industry has taken some time to get to this stage because there haven’t been many examples of this model being successfully implemented until recently.”
Social bonds measure up
Another instrument gaining ground is the social bond, which aims to address any of five broad themes, according to Sustainable Fitch: housing, health, transport, population and finance.
“While environmental issues like climate change and biodiversity loss have made recent gains within sustainable finance, areas of social impact — including socioeconomic development, access to essential services and the elimination of poverty and inequality — have remained a challenge for many investors,” says analyst Jonathon Smith. “Social impact is complex, multifaceted and subject to regional considerations, likely contributing towards a broad lack of standardisation across reporting and measurement activities.”
Issuance has stabilised since ballooning in 2020 and 2021, when investment in social infrastructure, especially healthcare, was propelled by the Covid-19 pandemic.
According to Sustainable Fitch, annual issuance has since averaged about US$175 billion for social bonds and US$158 billion for sustainability bonds, which have a combination of environmental and social use of proceeds (UOP).
Sustainable Fitch assessed some 3,500 labelled bonds with an aggregate total value of nearly US$2 trillion. Among geographies, French social bonds represent about a third of all social bonds reviewed by Sustainable Fitch.
Perhaps by sheer magnitude, European issuers most consistently disclose social impact metrics, with notable alignment among issuers from France, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK.
Hoping to standardise such disclosures are regulators in Canada, the European Union, South Korea and the UK, which have either begun consulting, drafting or have mandated social-related rules.
One specific development with respect to socially related debt instruments has been the emergence of the orange bond framework.
Orange bonds are a subset of social bonds focusing on gender equality, in addition to existing market bond standards set by the International Capital Market Association (ICMA).
Orange bonds get their name from the colour assigned to the United Nations’ fifth Sustainable Development Goal (SDG): gender equality.
It aims to mobilise the global bond market to build a gender-empowered financial system that embraces inclusion by valuing the full and meaningful participation of women, girls and the LGBTQI+ community.
The Orange Bond Initiative’s Steering Committee met for the first time in May 2022. Its members — the Singapore-based Impact Investment Exchange (IIX), ANZ, Nuveen, Shearman & Sterling, Water.org, US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) and United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) — published the Orange Bond Principles in October 2022.
Bonds are qualified as orange by committing UOP to financing projects or products that substantially and disproportionally benefit women, girls and minorities, or by supporting enterprises that are founded or majority-owned by these groups. Among other conditions, issuers and investors using the label are required to integrate a gender lens into their investment decision-making process.
Since 2021, there has been a meaningful uptake in orange bonds, both in terms of the number of issuances and cumulative value, says Smith.
The label saw its largest issuance to date in January, with Dutch public sector lender NWB Bank issuing a US$1.5 billion social bond focusing on affordable housing, categorised as orange due to its disproportionate focus on providing housing to vulnerable women.
Orange bonds ‘easier sell’ than climate: DBS
Social sustainability bonds that aim to improve the livelihoods of women, or “orange bonds”, are an “easier sell” than their climate-related counterparts, says Taimur Baig, managing director and chief economist at DBS Bank.
Speaking at the Orange Forum 2024, held in Singapore on Dec 10, 2024, Baig says: “[Bonds with a] climate-related lens suffer from the tragedy of the commons. If I, as a country, reduce my emissions by 20% and my neighbouring country doesn’t do anything, system-wide, you could argue emissions are going down and that country is benefitting from my hard work.”
But Baig says there is “no such problem” with instruments like the Women’s Livelihood Bond (WLB), which IIX first launched with DBS in July 2017. “It is about improving your absolute standards, and there is no question of the tragedy of the commons as far as gender-lens investment is concerned.”
In December 2023, IIX issued the sixth bond in the WLB Series, the US$100 million WLB6. With a 7.25% coupon rate, the WLB6 is expected to uplift over 880,000 women and girls in the Global South, making it the largest issuance in the series so far.
IIX is scheduled to issue WLB7 sometime this year, and the firm is targeting an issuance of some US$134 million.
To Baig and his team at DBS, the “macroeconomic case” for orange bonds is “easy” to understand. “[If] you have more women in the workforce, by definition, tautologically, your potential GDP growth rate goes up.”
This holds in specific microeconomic cases, too. Baig references a Bloomberg Intelligence (BI) report from October 2024, which suggests that companies with gender-diverse boards deliver annual returns 2% to 5% higher than those with fewer women.
According to the BI Women Capital study, the return differential between the highest board was 11% in the US, 13% in Europe and a sizeable 35% in the Asia Pacific.
“So, why should a bank like DBS be involved in not just making money, but making money with a gender lens in mind? It’s because making money becomes easier if you have a gender lens in mind,” says Baig.
Apart from orange bonds, Sustainable Fitch expects “additional attention on social issues” following the September 2024 launch of the Taskforce on Inequality and Social-related Financial Disclosures (TISFD), with the United Nations Development Programme as founder partner.
The TISFD, much like its climate (TCFD) and nature (TNFD) counterparts, aims to produce recommendations and guidance for businesses and financial institutions to understand and report on impacts, dependencies, risks and opportunities related to people and human capital.
The TISFD’s overview report provides examples of potential impact areas that could fall within its scope, including distribution of wages, compensation and benefits for employees; practices that affect the pay and conditions of value chain workers; and the impact of products and services on both communities and consumers.
Although the first version of the TISFD framework is only expected in late 2026, its potential to influence disclosure practices and investor focus is significant, says Smith. “Both the TCFD and TNFD encouraged widespread enhancement in data measurement, collection and reporting. The TCFD eventually formed the foundation of the International Sustainability Standards Board S1 and S2 standards, which are being progressively rolled out by financial regulators globally.”
Citi partners giving networks
Financial institutions even see opportunities in philanthropic donations, where there are no expectations of returns.
In March, Citi Private Bank launched new philanthropy advisory solutions in Asia, starting in Singapore. The move enables Citi Private Bank’s clients here to establish donor-advised funds (DAF) or donate through its two registered charity partners: the Community Foundation of Singapore (CFS) and AVPN.
CFS is Singapore’s oldest community foundation, boasting partnerships with over 400 charities and non-profit organisations. AVPN is the largest network of social investors in Asia, with over 600 members across 33 markets.
A DAF is a fund account for charitable donations, managed by a sponsor such as CFS or AVPN. Citi Private Bank’s global family office group will connect clients with relevant charities for philanthropic contributions.
The private bank’s 2024 annual survey showed that 24% of Asia-Pacific family offices provided services on philanthropy using internal and external expertise, up from 21% in 2023; and 15% of them relied on external expertise to deliver these services, compared to 9% in 2023.
“A lot of times the founder says to the family office, ‘Here’s what I’m interested in, now you go and implement’ and the family office is kind of looking at each other saying, ‘Well, we might not have the knowledge’,” says Citi Private Bank’s head of philanthropy advisory Karen Kardos at an April 2 media briefing.
Based in New York, Kardos hopes the bank can support family office staff in this regard. “That’s where advisers can be helpful and that’s where the DAF can play a very important role, to almost act as that outsourced team that has the programmatic experience to be able to implement the founder’s vision.”
The minimum sum required to set up a DAF is US$250,000. The “beauty” of this structure, says Kardos, is that clients can set aside donations in a DAF during a “high-income year”, and those donations grow tax-free while donors choose a beneficiary.
They also receive upfront tax deductions on eligible donations “at that point of donation”, she adds. “You get to kind of build the plane while you’re flying.”
A generational wealth transfer could mean greater demand for DAFs in the future. “What we see typically from the older generation is they want to build a hospital or they want to build a school,” says Kardos. “I think the younger generation is thinking more holistically about areas where they can make [an] impact… The younger generation [will] probably embrace using that sort of outsourced solution as they start to dip their toes in the water.”
Wealth at peace
East and Southeast Asia account for about 7% of impact investment assets globally, up from 1.5% just three years ago, according to the non-profit Global Impact Investing Network.
At just 7%, there is still “huge potential” to grow impact investing in Asia, says Valerie Lau, managing director and co-head of Apac sustainable finance at UBS.
Wealthy families in Hong Kong and Singapore, too, are keen to seize this opportunity, she adds.
Notably, Lau says these families are willing to follow today’s “pathways” to investing for impact, suggesting a collaborative approach. “Some of the pioneers in the market are becoming more receptive to pooling capital [or] investing in fund structures to try to achieve economies of scale in impact management and measurement, and more efficient portfolio management.”
Speaking on a panel in February, Lau notes a link between these families’ sources of wealth and the causes they find meaningful. “These businesses are not making their decisions in isolation… A shipping business family may be inclined to find solutions that target environmental and social impact. A textile business will be more open to looking at perhaps textile waste or sustainable synthetic materials. So, it’s an integrated approach that they’re taking here.”
Asia’s needs are wide-ranging, and smaller donors are also welcome. Dawn Chan, CEO of the Centre for Impact Investing and Practices (CIIP), says the “impact opportunity set” in Asia is large and it does not require new technology. “You do not need rocket science here. There is market demand and need for healthcare across the entire spectrum, and for smallholder farmers, it is not new tech that’s needed; it’s just scaling and execution.”
Catalytic capital is coming from various investors, and “sometimes it’s family offices and philanthropists stepping up”, she adds. “Sometimes, there are also companies and CSR (corporate social responsibility) stepping up, because they realise which pockets and which wallets they can actually put to use.”
Back at the summit where Australian philanthropist Killelea declared peace a prerequisite for survival, AVPN CEO Naina Batra called for the philanthropy sector to “step up to the challenge that the globe has presented us today”.
“Too often, what happens when something like this happens [is that] we freeze in the headlights. We sit down and we think, ‘Okay, I should stop everything till I figure out what’s going on in the world.’ That is really not the answer. The answer is to act faster, quicker and take more people along with you. Stopping is not an option.”
Photos: Albert Chua/The Edge Singapore, BlackRock, Citi Private Bank, ABC Impact, CIIP, SMU, Accenture, United Nations
