Impact Investing

Impact investing is a long-term investment approach that enables investors to achieve competitive financial returns while integrating measurable economic, environmental and social goals. Active impact investing treats capital as tool for investors to extend their mission-oriented work and effect social change. Alpha Impact Advisors can provide strategies to optimize capital commitments and ensure meaningful, impactful results. Disciplined investment process that begins with a clear understanding of your organization’s long-term objectives.

Community Reinvestment Act

The Community Reinvestment Act is intended to encourage depository institutions to help meet the credit needs of the communities in which they operate, including low- and moderate-income neighborhoods, consistent with safe and sound operations. CRA is designed to encourage banks to help revitalize communities through responsible lending and investing in the communities they serve. Under the CRA, federal financial institution regulators assess the record of each bank in fulfilling its obligation to its community.

Supporting documentation is key to a successful CRA examination. Examiners need concise and pertinent information to evaluate whether an investment, a loan or a service activity qualifies as community development. Financial institutions should provide examiners digestible reports with defined sources to ease the examination process.

Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) integrates the economic, social and environmental impact that business has on people, places, and the planet. CSR should be integral to core business objectives and strategies. Over 90% of the world’s largest 250 companies publish annual corporate responsibility reports, almost 60% of which are independently audited. Companies from sectors as diverse as financial services, information technology oil, gas and mining commit billions of dollars to help solve societal challenges. In 2014, 80% of the S&P 500 companies were creating corporate social responsibility reports.

Measuring Social Outcomes

Investors use standardized metrics to evaluate and manage their social and environmental performance. Impact investing requires a specialized approach to positively screening for outcomes rather than merely screening out certain investments, sectors or industries. Commoditized asset management is unlikely to capture relative value amongst good and bad projects without the deeper dive to understand how the project fits in the ecosystem, i.e. the net contribution.

Alpha Impact Advisors Services include:

• Impact Audit: Third party independent assessment of environmental or social reporting
• Due diligence on impact portfolios
• Portfolio Optimization using impact measurement and ESG factors
• CRA Research & Reporting: detailed reporting on community development activities for internal use or as independent third-party analysis.
• CRA Exam Preparation: Providing supporting documentation to examiners in a format that is meaningful and easy to use.
• Market-Rate Investment / Program Related Investment (MRI/PRI) Valuation