Everyone is talking about impact investing as an investment strategy – at the June edition of the digital VC Stammtisch Düsseldorf, we had the great pleasure of welcoming Andreas M. Rickert, CEO PHINEO gAG & Co-CEO NIXDORF Kapital AG, as a keynote speaker. In an entertaining and exciting presentation, Andreas Rickert took the participants on a journey through the development of impact investing to date – a field in which he himself has been active for more than 12 years as an investor, angel and player in civil society. He explained exactly what this means and what he believes still needs to happen for impact investing to actually become mainstream.
Andreas Rickert explained that many different social groups are driving the topic positively and that, in his opinion, continental Europe has the best prerequisites to confidently establish itself as a hotspot for impact investing through innovation.
Not to be confused with ESG investment criteria, impact investing as an investment strategy goes far beyond offsetting a negative footprint and focuses on the active promotion of sustainable objectives along the 17 global SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals).
Rickert made it very clear that impact investing must of course also meet the usual return criteria – because it is not about philanthropy for the sake of a good cause, but about innovative impact investing products with which the investor earns just as much or has the chance of a return as in other investments – and it is precisely with these products and their distribution across the retail sector that he believes there is still a lot of catching up to do.
Another important step on the way to establishing impact investing as mainstream are widely recognized tools for reliably measuring said impact, but here too there is a lot of movement and international measurement methods, such as IMP, are beginning to establish themselves as standards.
Here is the link to the video recording of the lecture! It’s worth watching!
Thank you very much for these exciting and inspiring insights Andreas M. Rickert – we will continue to follow the topic of impact investing at the VC Stammtisch with great interest.
