Welcome to this Special Edition of Smarter Impact, where you can read through the detailed conversation I had with The Rt. Hon Nick Hurd , Chair of The Global Steering Group for Impact Investment (GSG) .
If you didn’t catch the videos, they are here; Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4
You can also listen in full via all your favourite audio podcasts using the link below.
Transcript follows
Thank you for joining me for the first edition of Smarter Impact for 2024, and it’s my great pleasure to be here with the Rt. Hon. Nick Hurd – And Mr Hurd, you have a huge bio which we’ll get into in a moment.
And I do encourage people to click through the various links and associated organisations, and you’ll be able to discover thousands of people working to create a better world.
Though, to begin, I was wondering, Sir What’s the hardest thing you do?
-For me the hardest thing I do is to prioritise things.
I’m very lucky I’m in the flow of lots of opportunity and I can get excited about lots of things.
And like many people I guess, I find a big challenge is really prioritising what is absolutely essential.
Of course, I’m leaving on one side, the challenge of trying to be a good father to six children.
You know, that’s an altogether different scale.
– And how old are those kids?
– Well, it’s quite a big spread, six children from two marriages.
Four kids that are all well into their late twenties and early thirties and making their way in this complicated world.
And then a daughter of 11 and a young son of nine.
So quite a spread of parenting challenge.
And when you were talking about prioritising in relation to being the hardest thing you do what is it that’s hard about that?
Probably like a number of people watching this.
I get excited by things, historically I’ve found it quite hard to say no to things I like.
I like new ideas.
I like running with things.
I’ve learned over time the merits of trying to do less, better.
And with that, the need to kind of really focus on what you enjoy, but also what feels most important to you.
– And I was wondering, what is it that brings you the most joy?
– In a corny way I like things that make an impact.
I see myself as a doer, when I was a Minister in Government, I took pride in getting things done because I know how hard that is.
And I learned in government, for example that
working out what to do is difficult but probably only 10% of the challenge, is actually getting your idea or getting that policy or getting that program to harment, and work in the way that you originally conceived.
So I really like bringing together people to get something impactful done that makes a difference that people can be proud of what they did together.
I get a lot of buzz out of that.
– And in relation to that, you’ve been and forgive me, because you obviously were there for all of this, but for our listeners, you were Minister for Civil Society and the Minister of State for Climate Change and Industry, Minister for Policing and Fire Service, Minister for London, Minister of State.
And now you’re the Chair for the Global Steering Group for Impact Investing, Chair of the Access Foundation, you founded Big Society Capital.
You’re an advisor with Pollination and there’s a raft of other businesses you’re involved in.
And to me that really strikes the stepping between two worlds.
I know a lot of people who spend a lot of time in Government or a lot of people who spend time in Private Enterprise, and I was wondering what are the three things that come to mind, you’d suggest to people in Government about working with Private Enterprise?
– To be clear these are in sequence they’re not all running in parallel.
So I spent 14 years in British Parliament and nine years as a Government Minister, but that all finished in 2019.
So my work on impact now is in the private sector.
Your question is a really interesting one, because in a way I’ve got a slightly unusual perspective in that I speak government and I speak private sector and then I speak civil society and there are different languages and it touches on, quite a fundamental point Philip, in that my belief system is that, looking at the challenges that we face in every country, but also the connected world, both social challenges and environmental challenges I felt that at some time we have to get off the step of just simply asking “well what’s Government doing about it?” or “what’s the role of business?”
For me, the future is really about effective collaboration between different parts of society what we call our whole of society approach.
For that to work, those three legs of the tripod have got to understand each other and have got to find some common language.
And that in my experience is really hard because Government thinks in very different ways from business.
And both those think very differently from the way that Civil Society mindset is.
But there’s real magic, if you can, strike collaborations and what we call ‘impact partnerships’ that really allow those elements to work together.
And we achieved that in the UK in various ways which we can talk about.
I think for Government there are two steps.
The first is to realise that you don’t have all the answers, which for many governments who want to try to persuade their electorate that, they are the solution to everything, is a challenge.
But the reality is they don’t have all the answers.
There’s never going to be enough public money to solve all the problems in Australia or in England nor is there enough innovation or ability to innovate.
So why not try and collaborate with people who’ve got what you don’t have?
And for Government, that’s a very big step because they worry about accountability, they worry about whether they can trust the people that they’re working with.
So the first step is to realise you don’t have all the tools or all the capability.
And then once you understand that, you take a big step and reach out you take a big step and reach out and talk to others, but talk to others in a spirit of genuine partnership rather than ‘we are government, we know best’
– We’ve had the tension in Australia of where our government went to private sector consulting to fill that gap and essentially an information drain of the knowledge of the public sector and externalise that to consultants and now trying to drag that back to internalise that knowledge again.
– yeah, and with a lot of money spent along the way, and nothing really changes very much in that.
I’ll give you one example in the UK one of the things we engineered was a change in the way that government commissions.
Now that immediately starts to sound a bit dull, but if you think about how much money government spends on our behalf, the results we get for it in certain areas, that’s a system ready for change, and particularly in areas of social policy that have failed.
So I take an example of the UK children in care.
The state is a lousy parent.
The cost of a child in care I think is around £40,000 sterling a year to the taxpayer.
Terrible outcomes, long tail costs associated with failure. You know, decades of failure.
And faced with that, why wouldn’t you want to try and do something different?
And what we did with it, is we encouraged some innovation in the way the government commissions to work on what we call outcome based commission and entering into contracts outcome based commission and entering into contracts where actually it was sort of often civil society delivery partners who delivered the interventions with working capital provided often by the Impact Investment Community within a framework of really robust accountability for outcomes, really good data sets.
And the results are in many cases absolutely fantastic.
Homelessness in Manchester transformed through these kind of mechanisms.
And it’s not easy. It is not easy.
But it’s really worth it if you push through the difficulty and really strike that that partnership between those elements in society where everyone brings what they’re good at.
– and for people in private enterprise, is this a great time to be bringing these sort of ideas and this methodology of service delivery to government?
– Some governments won’t have anything to do with it because they don’t trust the private sector.
Often they think they know best But in a world which I hope is increasingly transparent in terms of impact and outcomes, I think that’s probably unsustainable.
There are lots of areas in public policy where government really struggles keeping people out of prison and keeping children out of care, homelessness, I’m just using three UK examples.
There’ll be different ones in Australia where we’re really my view is, come on, we’re failing, you know, let’s open the door to trying to find new, better solutions because at the end of the day, this isn’t about numbers or theory or ideology.
It’s really about people who are suffering, and trying to find better ways of helping them.
And often that requires money, it doesn’t always require government money.
Particularly in a world which I think is changing in terms of private sector attitudes and what the various stakeholders in the private sector now increasingly demand of their investments or the businesses that they work for or the businesses they do custom with
societal attitudes are changing around what we expect of business.
And the best business leaders understand that and really want more opportunities to demonstrate they’re good citizens and are playing a proactive role in trying to help social progress.
– I’m interested in this idea of the semantic density behind the word impact, there are contributing organisations in the Impact Task Force report, which I’ll link to in this conversation for people.
We’ve got people like Bridges Outcomes Partnerships, Social Value International, The International Foundation for Valuing Impact, the Value Balancing Alliance, the Impact Management Platform on and on and on.
We have this broadening regulatory environment with the Task Force of Nature Related Financial Disclosures and in some ways I see it as this shift both towards a requirement, a quest for transparency, but then on a government level, maybe in response to social license to operate or at least the constituents requirements that, we rein in unchecked capitalism that might have been externalizing costs onto our social and natural environments for quite a while.
I have people come to me and say “we want to make an impact.” And I ask “so do you mean you want a theory of change and an impact management framework, or do you mean you just want to feel good about where your money goes and to not pour paint down the drain?
Where do you find that conversation of impacts is in sort of the hearts and minds of people?
Do they do they just want to feel good about what they’re doing?
Do they want to take the hard regulatory approach to transparency?
What’s the (balance)?
– There’s obviously a spectrum, and I think if you take one step back, which often you need to, it’s really striking how much change that’s been over, the last decade, if you like.
The obvious proof points of that is the growth of the so-called, ESG movement inside the investment management industry, which has become the growth story, and so they’ve all, like moths to the flame, headed towards it in a way that’s positive because it reflects the kind of societal trends and expectations that we’re talking about.
And that’s a shift we should be welcoming.
People are beginning to care more about what their money is doing right?
That matters in a world where our investable wealth, our private savings is worth, $270 trillion, that mindset, that shift really matters Inevitably, though, as I’m sure you’ve exposed and discussed before, there are charlatans in that movement.
There’s greenwash.
There’s people who are simply doing it because that’s where they think the buck is rolling.
And that’s inevitable parts of human nature.
And we’re now at the point where the regulators, in the EU, for example, and others are saying, okay, this is an important movement, but it’s a movement that’s carrying risk now because of greenwashing and and concerns about integrity and therefore, some regulatory frameworks and taxonomies have to be built in the interests of investors so that we can actually trust what we’re being told by those who are managing our savings or want to manage our savings.
But within that ESG movement, let’s say it’s $40 billion.
Within that, there’s a spectrum of ambition.
On the far left (my left) you’ve got a cluster of capital that is content to do less harm and just wants to persuade investors that, okay, if you invest with us, we won’t invest in X, we won’t invest in Y.
That’s okay, I think.
My personal view, we’re in a world where doing less harm is not good enough and what I’m interested in and the movement that I chair, and the broader ecosystem that it’s part of, which is advocating for investment for positive impact, for mindset that gets up every morning thinking, how can I combine a sensible, adequate financial return with a measurable, positive, intentional impact?
That money, worth maybe a trillion and a half dollars at this point in time, within that spectrum of $40 billion, I’m using big round numbers.
That’s what’s got to grow.
we’ve got to push and nudge and accelerate the mind that says it’s no longer good enough just to do less harm.
We should be encouraging more capital to make a positive impact and be prepared to measure it and to be accountable for it and at the same time and they are connected you raised the point about external cost.
Parts of the reason we’re in the hole we’re in certainly environmentally is that companies have not been required to account for their impact.
Boards are taking decisions with no visibility or insight or investigation of the social environmental impact of their investment decisions and costs are externalized.
And that’s the fundamental thing that has to change, which is why, the Impact Task Force that I chair supported by the UK G7 presidency at the time, came out very strongly arguing for mandatory accounting for impact by companies.
You can’t change what you don’t know.
And we need that impact transparency so that we can, in I hope a not too distant future be able to have genuine insight into the impact of companies and the investment decisions they take and be able to make meaningful comparisons between companies and when that happens, behavior will change.
The destination for us is to integrate a third lens into investment decision making.
We obviously look at return, we’ve learnt to look at risk and therefore risk adjusted return, the second lens.
The third lens in our view has got to be impact.
Risk, Return and Impact have got to be the three lenses through which kind of every investment decision whether that be corporate or institutional is taken.
And on impact transparency, I really can now begin to see the movement.
You mentioned all the acronyms, Carbon Disclosure (TCFD) and Nature Disclosure (TNFD) following very quickly we’ve had the formation of the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) people are cooperating now to try and work towards a more harmonized framework of disclosure requirements.
You really begin to feel that that that moving.
We’ve got pioneers that we’re supporting out there looking at impact weighted accounts and to what degree we can put a monetary value on impacts and the degree to which this can be integrated into financial reporting system.
You can see now that the world could look very different in five years time in terms of the requirements on companies, in terms of disclosure and critically, the information available to us investors and stakeholders in companies, whether we’re employees or customers or investors.
I think the landscape of information available to us is going to be transformed, and that’s what we’re working towards.
– To me it’s also a question of human resources about the ability of people to actually be across this.
And earlier you were speaking about the three pillars, of Government, Private Enterprise and the social sector and how each have their own essentially semantic density and nomenclature and way of thinking and Impact in some ways is this fusion of them and this awareness that our actions have impact in other areas of society?
And how do we train people to be aware of that?
Is there a point where you get to saturation with your domain expertise and look sideways because I’m imagining somebody is interning in Government, or interning in private enterprise and growing their career, when do they get to the point of having an aha moment of going, Oh, hang on, there’s more going on, or is that what regulatory requirements are going to bring to the fore?
– It’s a really interesting question because in my experience, change advocates or change makers often underestimate the human capital dimension here.
Change requires people we often underestimate the importance of building human capability capacity and bringing people with you.
Inertia and fear of losing things are powerful human impulses.
In my experience, often it comes down to leadership.
If you’re leading a government department, which I’ve had the opportunity to do, or leading a business which I’ve had the opportunity to do you set the framework, you set the culture, you set expectation, you create the space in which people hopefully thrive and fulfill their potential.
I come back to the example that I used a few minutes ago around experience of government, of doing things in different ways and forging different relationships with outside government, with the private sector, the social investment community, I was very helped at that time by the fact that the Prime Minister of the UK at the time, David Cameron, really set his stall out on this, his message was we can’t keep deluding ourselves that governments have got all the answers.
Surely we forge a much better response to some of the challenges that undermine the country, if we could find better ways of getting governments and business and civil society working together more effectively.
So I had that kind of top cover.
And we set out in the department to try and do things differently.
And I tell you what I found Philip was once you’ve created the signal of approval and encouragement, some resisted, some were uncomfortable, but some people just leapt at it.
I learned that inside the public sector, actually, there is an entrepreneurial spirit.
And we did that in the UK.
We opened up a number of the public services areas to mutuals.
We basically said, look, if you’re running a service to the public and you’ve got strong ideas of how it could be done better of how it could be done better through a mutual model whereby you’ve got a stake in the business, then we’re open to effectively spinning you out and supporting you with a contract.
Hundreds of organisations took that up.
So it’s really about the signal from leadership and about what’s okay and what’s encouraged.
And we got a fantastic response in the UK to that kind of liberation.
– A lot of my work begins with stakeholder mapping and figuring out the leverage points of the clients I work with who are impact funds, and some government departments And I do wonder about the impact movement in the sense that I hear a lot of work, for instance, in where I am in Australasia for supporting the Global South and reducing wealth inequality and generally uplifting humanity.
And then that’s coming from people who are arguably well-off who have this ability in almost an awareness of enlightened self-interest or a hierarchy of needs from Maslow’s perspective to really self-actualize as people who are changing the world.
And I wonder, as we’re heading into this sort of more, I’m perceiving it as separated almost the
the breaking apart of globalisation and the sort of strongmen leadership of countries.
Is the middle going to come on this journey?
As people are under more pressure, do they have the space in your experience or what you’re witnessing to go back to type and want betterment for all?
– It’s a really good question because, definitely the world has changed, the global order and geopolitics has become more fragmented, more friction, more competitive.
That’s absolutely true.
On the other hand, if I look at oddly, the existential global challenge of climate change, for example, climate change, for example, that connective tissue of collaboration and cooperation is alive and arguably accelerating in terms of when you look at the our progress in terms of reducing the costs of the technologies that are going to be key to the future, the flow of investment into those technologies.
And at the same time, you’re seeing very strong evidence of I don’t like the expression, but the so-called Global South becoming better organized, more vocal.
The African Union, for example, taking seats up on the G20, expansion of the BRIC networks.
You can see that the Global South You can see that the Global South is getting more organised, more vocal, and the Global North is having to respond to that.
And obviously, where this all comes together is the huge funding gap, the gap between what smart people tell us, what their models tell us in terms of what is required in terms of investment flows to help us deliver on the Sustainable Development Goals and climate, although obviously climate is absolutely integrated into the Sustainable Development Goals.
And that gap is measured in trillions annually and the gap is particularly acute in the so-called emerging economies, that is recognised.
And when you look at things like the Bridgetown Initiative and you look at some of the stuff coming out of the G20 and the G7, you can see that there’s political recognition of the need to do something about that.
And we detect through our networks interests in the private sector, there’s institutional investors and corporate leaders in obviously investing in emerging economies because, arguably that’s where the growth is.
But there are complexities and there are barriers and there are problems and there are risks that need to be managed and risks that need to be mitigated.
And again, that’s a whole space that we got into with the Impact Task Force where we were asking ourselves, okay, we’ve got this agenda around impact transparency.
And we’re clearly making progress towards a world in which companies will account for their impacts in a meaningful way.
But we’ve now at the same time, we’ve also got to look at the supply of opportunity to invest, particularly in so-called emerging economies, where there are real barriers and real problems.
And we’ve got to transform that landscape of supply too many investors saying that we’d love to, but it’s too difficult and we’ve got to take action in the short term to break down those barriers in order to make more appropriate investment opportunities for the big institutional money.
That is the money that’s sitting on the sidelines at this moment in time and needs to be deployed for positive impact in our view of the world.
– When you hear it’s too difficult, what do you think they’re saying?
I think there are real difficulties in terms of, things that are material to risk adjusted return assessments, not least foreign exchange risk or government risk all manners of real risk that might gets in the way of of a pension fund in Australia, that might gets in the way of a pension fund in Australia, investing in Nigeria or Ghana or Indonesia so there are very real risks.
We argue that there are tools to manage and mitigate those risks.
And there’s a role for government in that, hopefully temporary.
We also believe because I think the evidence tells us that those risks may be distorted and magnified in the eyes of investors because there is some demonstration effect of investments being made generating, decent returns in those environments.
We think that a large part of this is mindset and basically system inertia, and basically system inertia, which is often the biggest barrier to change.
So our work is around identifying the real risks, looking at tools that can dismantle those barriers and reduce the cost of capital in those in those countries.
And encouraging the building of demonstration effect over time, gradually over time, gradually
the position of the risks are too great or the returns are too small becomes untenable.
And as money begins to flow, copycat culture, which is rampant in the investment management industry, will kick in.
– Thank you for answering both sides of that.
I didn’t mean to be flippant because when I asked the question, I came up with 20 specific reasons why it’s not happening But then things change – we need the money to flow, right?
We need the money to flow.
If we’re serious about the SDGs and climate, if we accept the fact that there are, big, important emerging economies that have to transition to clean energy, and if we accept our responsibility in supporting that
and we also are alive, to the huge economic opportunity attached to investing in support of these transitions, then why wouldn’t we try to put all our brainpower and energy behind thinking, okay, how do we make this easier?
How do we make this flow?
Because it’s urgent, right?
– Yeah.
– The clock is ticking.
It’s just gonna be around the corner, and we’re nowhere near where we need to be on climate or the SDGs.
So this feels urgent to us.
And that’s why we came together with the task force.
That’s what drives the GSG country by country to try and bring some energy and urgency to the question.
“How do we create a better environment for investment to flow that really wants to combine return with positive impact to make a difference?” – I feel like you may have just beautifully answered the question I was about to ask, which is “Who is the GSG for?”
– Well, ultimately it’s for the beneficiaries of the investment.
As industry evolved or special interests evolved, they tend to wrap fog around them and bristle with acronyms and become impenetrable to the outside world and often loose sight of what’s really important.
It’s about impact, ultimately about impact on people and improving people’s lives.
And of course that includes, the physical environments, the natural environments in which they in which they live, in which they work.
Ultimately it’s about people and planet and the difference that money can make to delivering better outcomes and securing a better future, and the money’s a tool, right?
And the instruments we talk about and get very excited about, they’re tools.
Ultimately it’s about driving bigger percentages of the wealth that we’ve accumulated through extractive economies to drive more of that money to deliver better outcomes for people, hopefully in the context of an economic model that is much more focused on outcomes and regeneration and a better balance between wealth creation and sustainability.
– That’s wonderful!
For somebody who’s in finance, I think they’d be pretty crazy if they hadn’t heard of the GSG or the GIIN why would I get involved with the GSG?
I’m sorry to make you pitch here, obviously people can Google the GSG
– I’ve just recently taken over Chairmanship of the GSG from Sir Ronald Cohen with whom I’ve worked very closely for a number of years and is a very close friend under his leadership, from a sort of core of eight (countries), which was its origins setup under the G8 by David Cameron, now to over 40 countries around the world, and Philip, a queue a couple of dozen countries that also want to join the network.
So something is happening here in terms of the energy out there, people who want something different and essentially what we do, country by country, is try and build ecosystems that enable more impact transparency and more investment to flow, that enable more impact transparency and more investment to flow, that’s looking to make a positive impact alongside natural return.
And so we bring together the demand side, the supply side, investors, entrepreneurs, policymakers, intermediaries, regulators.
We try and bring them together in what we call the National Advisory Board at the local level.
And we try and then support them in their work, engaging with government, engaging with investment institutions, engaging with regulators, try to bring to them wherever they are, whether they’re in Ghana or Bangladesh.
We try and bring the learnings from around the world so that wherever we’re advocating or engaging or convening or influencing or structuring new opportunity, we can learn from people who are trying to do the same we can learn from people who are trying to do the same somewhere else, and we can also give as well.
So it’s an extraordinary network of changemakers collaborating at a national level within their own countries, but also collaborating internationally to learn from each other, to encourage each other, to support each other, to inspire each other, to keep pushing for that change so that this becomes a truly global movement and country by country we create an environment which is creating more opportunity for impact investment and flow that is creating more pressure for an understanding of impact transparency and of course investment will flow between countries.
So we have countries that are exporters of capital and we have countries in the network that obviously want that capital, as well as encouraging their own domestic pools of capital to think about allocating more to impact.
So it’s a very dynamic network and I think you’re in Malaga where we brought everyone together with almost 1000 people, 60 countries.
It’s something rather unique and precious.
Precious is such a resonant word for me My experience of being around the GSG for the last few years and being involved is that element of asking better questions.
Because I consistently see the GSG pose better questions of, “Why isn’t it like this?
Could it be like this?
Hey, what if we did it like this?” And that I see come from the membership, come from the leaders, come from the investees and the stakeholders who are benefited by this process.
And Government officials; “Ah, it could be like that.” It’s this posing of questions that I find as catalysts for change.
– It’s hard to argue against impact transparency.
I’ve been a big advocate for transparency as a Government Minister it’s a great disinfectant.
It’s pretty powerful discipline.
It’s almost impossible to argue against.
– Yeah
“No, we can’t be transparent.” “We can’t give our customers information.” “We can’t give shareholders information.” So I think it’s a very powerful thing to argue for.
It changes behavior, of course, because you’ve suddenly getting boards beginning to compare what they’re doing with what their peer group are doing.
And we’re finding on the Impact Valuation work which is groundbreaking and very much out there, exploring methodologies for putting a monetary value on impact.
When we start doing
comparisons between companies like Coca Cola and Pepsi and their use of water, it’s staggering.
It’s absolutely staggering, and I can’t help feeling that once that gets into the flow of what is normal in assessing company performance.
And you can see it for example, on the Bloomberg Terminal, that’s when you get
the real behavior change.
And then people say ‘okay, now we really need to improve our impact.
We need to be looking more proactively at our impact.’ Then you need to create the supply.
You have to have the supply side of opportunity alongside that and engagement with governments is increasingly sensible ones realise they haven’t got all the answers.
Our challenge to ourselves is, country by country,
how can we engage with our government, to be a credible part of the solution to their priority at the moment, skills development or homelessness or improving quality of life in informal settlements, whatever it is,
our challenge to ourselves is can we work with partners to structure investable opportunities that are acceptable to the government whereby we can be part of the solution?
And so we push ourselves hard on that.
And Philip, I think the bottom line is what drove me as a sort of young minister kind of inspired by this, I couldn’t help feeling that if we could work towards a world where if you or I were presented with a choice of investment opportunities and investment opportunity A gave you a financial return, and investment opportunity B gave you a financial return that was acceptable to you but combines with evidence of a positive impact.
Which would you choose?
So I want to work towards a world where we have that choice and it’s not a pipe dream.
In France they changed the law so that the pensions offered to you at work, you have a choice of a solidarity pension where a proportion of that is invested effectively for social benefits and social purposes It’s very, very popular.
It’s a default choice, if you like.
I’d love us all to have that choice because I’m pretty sure that presented with that choice, I know where the money will flow.
So the challenge is to make sure that choice is a real choice, that there’s a sufficient flow of genuine investable opportunity that can deliver that impact, but also can deliver a return that’s appropriate and acceptable.
– Wonderfully said. And everything you’re sharing here obviously has deep experience and examples behind it.
So for people listening, if they’re inspired by any part of this conversation, get involved.
Go and ask the question “How do we do that?” – It’s real! It’s real.
It’s emerging, it’s fledgling.
There’s still not enough demonstration effects.
Some of it is too small scale, in my view.
But something’s happening, I’m Chairing a network with over 40 countries.
And it could be more much more than that.
People want to be part of this, people want to make this change within their countries and the pace of success will differ in different places.
within their countries and the pace of success will differ in different places.
This is going to happen.
It has to happen
Just because of the context we’re in which is unsustainable and we’re talking about changing arguably the most powerful economic system we have, which is the system that allocates our wealth accumulated in trillions over many centuries.
Obviously, a large proportion of it now being passed on to a younger generation with different values that will want different things.
So it’s an incredibly exciting time.
But this is about system change.
This is about a different way of allocating our wealth to ensure that we integrate impact into our decision making alongside risk and return.
– That was a wonderful way to wrap this up.
And in the last, if you can, the last 3 minutes, this might be a touch of a philosophical question; Speaking to rites of passage and tradition, in some ways, I’d suggest these are a little lacking in my generation of Western Society as we drifted a little from religious orders and things like that.
But I believe you’re a Liveryman for the Worshipful Company of Grocers, and I was wondering if you share what that brings to your perspective on the world.
I became what we call a Grocer, it’s a part of these Livery Companies, very much an important part of the City of London in the UK.
So there are two dimensions to that.
One is family.
So my Grandfather was the Master of that livery and for him, it was one of the great joys in his life.
I’m connected to him through it.
But it is also a gathering of people where, the common ground is companionship, but also about a collective will to make a difference.
These Livery Companies are a force for good because they’re generous and they encourage people to be generous because they’re generous and they encourage people to be generous in a quiet way, not in a flashy way.
That’s another dimension to it.
They demonstrate social responsibility.
I think that value is a really, really important one in this age that value of social responsibility.
And obviously we’re in a completely different age with social media being potentially a force for good, but also a force for fragmentation and division as well, we’ll collectively have to work that out.
Those quiet little societies, in their quiet, modest way, bring people together to develop and demonstrate social responsibility.
And I think that’s valuable.
– Wonderful.
Thank you so much for your time.
I appreciate we’re at the end of it.
So I will encourage people to go look up the Global Steering Group for Impact Investment get involved, get amongst it, the world needs us!
– Yes, please do! http://gsgii.org
