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Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL)

The Investment Leaders Group (ILG) has developed an original framework to allow the industry to quantify investment impacts. Our aim is to enable a ‘revolution’ in consumer choice in financial services. This means making the social and environmental impacts of investment transparent to financial consumers in the same way that health and other concerns are apparent to food consumers today.

In Search of Impact ReportThe Sustainable Investment Framework


All investment has an impact on the real world. To a large extent these impacts – for example job creation or natural resource consumption – are opaque to investors, with limited information available from standard information sources.

The ILG shares a common vision of the future of impact reporting in which all funds will be assessed using a common impact standard such that financial consumers can make informed choices about how and where to invest. This new framework represents an important step in that direction. 

Impact wide

In search of Impact: Measuring the full value of capital

This foundation publication on the development of the framework was originally published in 2016. 

In search of impact: Measuring the full value of capital, offered investors a set of six impact metrics, testing two of them in practice. 

In Search of Impact cover

The Sustainable Investment Framework: translating the UN SDGs into measurable indicators that can be calculable, easily understood, and implementable by investors

The framework meshes directly with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to assist investors in understanding the alignment of their portfolios through six impact themes (basic needs, climate stability, decent work, healthy ecosystems, resource security and wellbeing).

 

Further development of the framework


The Sustainable Investment Framework outlines six practical ('base') metrics to measure fund impact, published alongside their ideal cousins. These proposed ideal metrics have been designed as a roadmap to assess the absolute performance of funds with reference to United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals.

Following the framework’s publication in 2019, the Investment Leaders Group, convened by the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) has embarked on a programme of work to develop each of the six, ideal metrics from their base versions, leveraging improvements in data infrastructure and availability as regulatory changes and reporting requirements drive better data disclosure. The programme will comprise a series of sequel reports to the Sustainable Investment Framework – one for each impact theme – offered as a guide for funds to judge their performance against these ideal metrics.

 

climate performance of inve

Understanding the climate performance of investment funds

The work analyses approaches currently used to measure and report investment funds' climate performance and makes a case for temperature score to act as a universal measure of climate performance for the industry.

Decent Work

The ILG are working to understand and optimise how investors currently measure the impact of their portfolios on decent work. Work will include a guide for the investment industry on key concepts, disclosure frameworks, initiatives and the challenges of measuring decent work, paving the way for the development of an ideal metric that measures qualitative and quantitative labour-related information, that builds on the Sustainable Investment Frameworks. 

 

Why is measuring investment impacts critical to ILG members?


Members of the Investment Leaders Group talk about why measuring investment impacts is important to their organisation and how the Cambridge Impact Framework could help the industry.

 

John Belgrove, Senior Partner, Aon

 

Will Oulton, Global Head of Responsible Investment, First Sentier Investors

 

Victoria Leggett, Head of Impact Investment, UBP

 

Johanna Koeb, Head of Responsible Investment, Zurich