11:15 - 13:00

Martin Rich (United Kingdom)
Director - Social Finance

Christophe Person (France)
Social Business Funds Development Officer - IDEAM

Impact investing : Back to financing the Real Economy

Harry Hummels (The Netherlands)
Director - SNS Asset Management N.V.

Investing in African Land: Right or Wrong?

Institutional investors are rather detached in investing in Africa. Investments in African countries are usually defined as risky and show little upside.

However, if you look at the fundamentals, Africa is an attractive growth market and the climate and market risks are easy to monitor.

SNS Asset Management will demonstrate that there is lot of potential in Africa shown by the SNS African Agriculture Fund that invests large-scale in agriculture in the southern parts of Africa. This fund offers institutional clients the possibility to invest in agriculture against an attractive financial return while at the same time alleviating poverty in African countries and contributing to environmentally responsible farmland operations in these countries.

Cedric Lombard (Switzerland )
Founder and General Manager - Impact Finance Management S.A.

Impact Investing: From Beliefs To Proofs

Impact Investing lies at the crossroad of different challenges that the finance will have to face sooner or later: responsibility, transparency, externalities, decorrelation... From a simplistic and reductive paradigm only taking into account risk and return, Impact investing has to build a case for considering investments in a broader context. The design of a new paradigm will require innovative approach and acknowledge the inherent complexity of things, the time perspective and the interrelation within the value chains. Microfinance has been a great catalyst in demonstrating the way, but it has based its success on allegations of impact but no proofs. The growing number of cases of collapse show the way towards a greater responsibility of those claiming impact to prove what they claim.

Serge LeVert-Chiasson (Canada)
Vice-President and Chief Investment Officer - Sarona Asset Management Inc

Impact Oriented Managers Outperform Peers

With a rich 58-year history in creating business solutions to poverty, Sarona has much to share as one of the oldest frontier markets impact investment practitioners. Sarona demonstrates that market-oriented impact private equity managers have consistently outperformed their peers, enabling them to improve the quality of life in local communities, while earning risk-adjusted market rates of return for their investors.