UPCOMING: 26th - 27th March 2024 | Amsterdam

ISE 2023 logo and tagline 1

Impact Summit Europe annually invites global leaders, pioneers and experts of the impact investing universe to share their knowledge and inspiration. A 2-day programme is annually designed with a mix of thought-provoking thought leadership: interviews, keynote speeches, panel discussions, debates, in-depth workshops, InvestorConnect meetings & Chatham House rule sessions.

HIGHLIGHTS 2023

  1. The 9th edition of Impact Summit Europe took place on the 28th and the 29th of March 2023 in The Hague. 200+ institutional investors, 80 speaker experts, 34 pre-screened impact strategies and more industry specialists have made this Summit a valuable milestone in the development and acceleration of impact investing.  A total of 400 participants have joined us from around the globe for the 2 days of meaningful discussions on how to increase allocations of institutional capital towards impact and sustainable investments.  600 connections between investors and a select group of impact fund managers were facilitated by the Phenix Capital Group team, with the aim to showcase to investors a wide range of tangible investment opportunities. 
     
    We want to express our heartfelt gratitude to all institutional investors, impact fund managers, partners and supporters, who joined us at the 2023 edition of the leading impact investing conference in Europe for institutional investors. 

    Thank you for being a part of this amazing community, and we look forward to seeing you next year!
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Impact Summit Europe 2023, Grand Hotel Amrâth Kurhaus, The Hague

SESSIONS HIGHLIGHTS

EXPERT INTERVIEWS 2023

 

Piet Klop

Head of Responsible Investment, PGGM

 
Interview about traditional vs impact investing/ sustainable investing
 
“The best thing investors can do to grow the impact of their investments and to grow the industry is to take more responsible risk, to get better at judging future risks. Risks right now is mostly a statistical phenomenon, what happened over the past 20 years you expect later that you arrive at some measure of risk. I think that’s not going to cut it anymore. We need to trust projections, we need to trust scenarios. In an exponentially changing world, yes we can justify taking more risk, in order to get to the impact we all need.” 

 

Katie Fulford-Smith

Impact Investment Professional, Big Society Capital 

 
Interview about traditional vs impact/sustainable investing
 
“So investors can do more to drive capital to impact Investing and by working together so there’s a real power in learning from peers so, whether you’re an investor and an asset manager or whether you’re an investor and an asset owner, the more you can talk to your peers, educate yourself about the opportunities and how to great real impact and then act on that together, I think greater things will happen.”

 

Cyril Gouiffès

Head of Social Impact Equity Investments, European Investment Fund 

 
Interview about traditional vs impact/sustainable investing
 
“In order to drive more capital to the industry, investors should first and foremost in my view, consider very carefully what are their short-term, medium-term and long-term objectives because smart investment decisions in 2023 cannot only be about generating fast or exclusively financial performance because of the summer we’re experiencing the social situation that is prevailing in many members states in the EU, prevailing in worldwide, I think it is not wise to only asses the quality of investment through the goggles of financial KPIs. So, I think factoring in Impact is actually the only wise decision in the long term when it comes to making a smart investment decision.”

 

Dr. Andreas Nilsson

Managing Director Head of Impact, Golding Capital Partners

 
Interview about the challenges and opportunities in impact investing
 
“The one single theme within impact investing that I think requires more attention, is how we produce food for 9 billion people in the next few years in a sustainable way that doesn’t destroy our planet.”

 

Brunno Maradei

Global Head of Responsible Investment, Aegon Asset Management

 
Interview about Listed Equity and Impact Management/ Impact Measuring (IMM)
 
“The key challenges for the impact industry this year are the continuous challenge of measuring and metrics, we need to demonstrate our value to the investors, we need to measure impact in a consistent fashion and that continues to be a challenge. Regulation is only going to add to that as we see regulatory divergence between the UK, the EU and the United States and I think potentially impact hushing will become a big thing in the United States as American asset managers try to conceal some of their efforts towards impact and ESG for fear of triggering adverse reactions in Republican states.”

 

James W. Hourdequin

CEO and Managing Director, The Lyme Timber Company

 
Interview about the challenges and opportunities in impact investing
 
“One of the thing that can be done to ensure that impact investing doesn’t become a form of greenwashing is to hold managers into account and to ask them to describe what their objectives are, what are their measurable outcomes that they seek to deliver and then have them report on those objectives on an annual basis that’s something that we do in our annual report, we’ve established our five-year ESG goals which we published in our reports and each year we describe our progress towards achieving those goals.”

 

Johannes Heickmann

Product Specialist for Sustainable Investments, DWS International GmbH

 

Interview about the challenges and opportunities in impact investing 

 

“An impact theme that requires more attention in my view is carbon sequestration, there was a lot of focus on mitigation and now adaptation and biodiversity come up in the climate space, but carbon sequestration is really undervalued, to achieve the 2013-2050 targets we really need to look at getting carbon out of the air and we can do that by carbon sinks and while there are a lot of innovative solutions in the private sector. I think especially like larger impact funds and the development finance community have not given enough attention to carbon sequestration and innovative solutions in their field.”

 

Michael Bruun

Global Co-Head of Private Equity, Goldman Sachs Asset Management 

 
Interview about Sustainability and Impact Investing
 

“So, when we think about big themes and opportunities in sustainability and impact investing we look at the world through two lenses, one is climate transition and the other one is inclusive growth. In climate transition, we focus on clean energy, sustainable transport, wasted materials, sustainable farming and agriculture and ecosystem services. I would say, within clean energy it’s not only the generation of renewable energy but also importantly, storing energy to avoid intermittence in the grid.”

 

Dr. Stefan Hasenböhler

CEO, Reichmuth & Co Investment Management AG 

 
Interview about the challenges and opportunities in impact investing
 
“The impact theme which we have to look more at is I think the transportation sector because everybody is focusing at the moment on energy and alternative investments in terms of sustainability and sustainable investments, but that also should be seen from the transportation angle, knowing that 25% of the CO2 emissions are coming from there. So, I think we should really be focusing also on having new kinds of transportation opportunities there on the transportation sector.”

 

William de Vries

Director Impact Equities and Bonds Triodos Investment Management

 
Interview about the challenges and opportunities in impact investing
 

“I think we really have to have evidence-based regulation from our regulators it’s very important that regulation although we all know that it is a burden we have to start reporting on what we are doing and how we provide the impacts. I think that we all should look to get evidence-based as a key to ensure that greenwashing is not happening in our business.”

  1. THEME & AGENDA 2023
ISE 2023 theme
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  2. We are halfway through the timeline of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). To hit a homerun, investors need to incorporate more impact into their portfolios. Tangible impact has yet to be made to safeguard the well-being of future generations and the conservation of the earth’s flora and fauna. How will institutional investors reach the SDGs, while dealing with stakeholders, biases, and measurement challenges? 

    With a variety of sessions tailored to the needs of our investor network and directly tackling the most challenging topics in impact investing, Impact Summit Europe brings together financial players to learn from each other, apply the best practices for meaningful capital allocation, and become strong advocates for impact investing.

 

ADVISORY BOARD 2023

We proudly collaborated with impact thought leaders as our agenda advisory board to identify current challenges, opportunities and forward-looking topics in the impact investing universe to build a beneficial & thought-provoking programme.


• Cyril Gouiffès, Head of Social Impact Equity Investments, European Investment Fund
Marta Hervás Melgarejo, Investment Director, Arcano Partners
• Irina Ivan, Programme Manager for Innovation and Learning, Bernard van Leer Foundation
• Yvonne Janssen, Team Lead Sustainable Investment, PGB Pensioendienste
• Piet Klop, Head of Responsible Investments, PGGM Investments
Daan Spaargaren, Senior Strategist Responsible Investment, Pensioenfonds van de Metalektro (PME)
• Gunnar Stork, Senior Director, the German Development Finance Institution (DEG)
• Vincent Triesschijn, Global Head ESG and Sustainable Investing, ABN AMRO Bank
• Paul van der Weijden, Senior Advisor Responsible Investments, a.s.r. vermogensbeheer
• Rebecca Wörner, Advisor Responsible Investment, Pensioenfonds Metaal en Techniek

2023 SNAPSHOTS

MORE CONVERSATIONS ON IMPACT INVESTING

 

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