How did you get into impact investing?
After having worked as a fund manager for private markets at MN and Shell for several years, I started to notice that there were a lot of impact fund managers which combine good risk-return characteristics with positive impact as well. I found that fascinating, so I decided to look into that more. At the same time and especially after the financial crisis in 2008, I sensed that there was a paradigm shift happening – society had significantly raised the bar on us, portfolio managers, expecting us to be responsible for the environmental and societal impact of our financial decisions. While we were still in our traditional risk-return bubble, society had moved on. Having just realized how promising the impact fund universe looks like, it became my motivation to help institutional investors move into the impact space by building a truly diversified portfolio that made sense from a financial as well as from an impact perspective. So in the end, what started off as little curiosity, turned into a fully operating business where we as Phenix have launched several products that help push forward the institutional impact investing industry.
IS THERE ONE THEME WITHIN THE SDGS THAT YOU SPECIFICALLY IDENTIFY OR SYMPATHIZE WITH?
I love nature, so I guess that would be SDGs 14 and 15, Life below Water and Life on Land. When I went snorkelling in Thailand and discovered the coral reefs, I thought that this is probably the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. But when I went a little bit further, I discovered areas where the corals were completely dead. Years later in Maui, it was just fields over fields of dead coral, and I realized that the coral reefs might not be around when my kids grow up. To me, it is sad but also scary, because we have no idea what the effects of all of this are going to be.
WHAT DIFFERENTIATES IMPACT INVESTING FROM TRADITIONAL INVESTING, IN YOUR OWN WORDS?
Impact adds an extra dimension to our work and requires additional layers of profound analysis. As an investment professional, you still need to do your normal due diligence on risk and return, but then you also need to look at impact data, which is especially challenging because the industry is still relatively young. We at Phenix push for the standardisation of impact management frameworks and the usage of universal tools like the IMP framework or IRIS+ to make the lives of impact investment professionals easier and the outcome of their work more comparable.
WHAT MOTIVATES YOU IN WHAT YOU ARE DOING ON A DAY-TO-DAY BASIS
I love to work in an environment where my professional skills are very much integrated with my personal values and I encourage everyone at Phenix to bring their own values to the table. I love to provide a space where everyone can work on themes they care about. Some people are passionate about gender equality, or climate change, I wish to support that. Of course, sometimes we disagree – in the end, if you ask 10 people what a better world looks like, you get 10 different answers. But that doesn’t hold people back from collaborating and I see a lot of innovation and creativity happening, which I really appreciate.
Phenix Capital is an Amsterdam-based investment consultant that catalyses institutional capital for the SDGs.
