The Finnish investment field appears to have adopted responsible investment as a part of the basic principles of investment activities, but impact investment still poses challenges for capital investors.

This was the result of a recent study commissioned by the Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra and the Finnish Venture Capital Association (FVCA), and carried out by Deloitte Ltd. Currently, the impact – i.e. the effect of such investing – is primarily evident as a by-product of long-term investment activities and it is not necessarily used as a part of the marketing or investment strategies. This is largely due to the development stage of the impact investment ecosystem in Finland.

According to the study, the transition to impact investing is gradually occurring through responsible investing. Responsible investing merely considers social, environmental and ethical issues in investment decisions, but impact investing has a goal of generating a beneficial impact on the world along with a financial return. Impact can be seen as an extension of responsibility, which is supported by both the interviews of institutional investors and the survey results conducted on capital investors.

The survey indicated that the majority of capital investors are currently operating in the area of responsible investment, but are moving towards being impactful. Sitra regularly interacts with a wide variety of investors in order to ensure that the development of the investment market in Finland is as balanced as possible where increasing their knowledge and, in turn, making impact investing decisions are concerned.

The main results of our collaborative impact investing study are presented in his slide set.