"Impact investing industry has reached momentum. In the past 10 years, impact has become mainstream to the point where institutional investors routinely speak of impact investing. The next real challenge is moving past merely measuring outputs and truly understand the impact being made on the ground. 

In the early days of impact investing, the focus of the industry was on social issues whereas nowadays environmental themes, specifically biodiversity, become more the center of attention. The challenges we see today with inequalities and detriment of democratic institutions in the West is really preoccupying and a source of geopolitical and social risk. These challenges must be addressed as impact investors. It is also the role of private capital to address large social and environmental issues. With the right market frameworks in place, and adequate regulatory frameworks, the public sector and private sector need to work hand in hand to create the impact we all want to see."

"There are certainly challenges in terms of information asymetry, fundraising, and common definitions, but these can be overcome if you work together.  

To drive greater allocation towards the SDGs, we need to speak their language and communicate better on what we have achieved so far and the ingredients for success.  

We join forces with both the private and public sector and we certainly need to continue in this way. It is great to see that the ecosystem has matured, seeing more and more specialized fund managers. The challenge is to get more private investors on board, the public investors are certainly committed. We want investors to be bold to join forces in partnerships."

"In the start, investors were very enthusiastic and genuine about impact investing, but recently it has started to become again a conversation very much centered on risk and return.  

It is crucial that investors need to educate themselves on the topic and continue getting informed. My frustration is that mainstream investors in Germany, where I am from, simply do not know enough about impact investing and what impact investing can do.  

The challenge of asset owners to convince their organisation about the merits of impact investing, because a lot do not think that it cannot generate attractive returns at the same time as quantifiable and tangible impact."

"A word to define the past decade in impact investing would be authenticity. A lot of themes that we saw 10 years ago will still be relevant in the next 10 years, such as access to education, healthcare, diversity and inclusion. New themes could be immigration and their inclusion. Diversity of asset classes certainly to deploy capital tackling long-standing issues like energy efficiency or climate."