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How does Investinor work with impact, and what is your role in this work?
As Norway's largest venture investor, Investinor invests both directly in companies and through other funds. We don't have specific guidelines for impact investments, but the topic is important to us for several reasons:
· We see many good investment opportunities in companies addressing one or more sustainability challenges.
· We also notice that more and more capital is coming from impact investors, representing a potential capital source for many of our portfolio companies.
· When investing in other funds, we’re seeing an increased share of impact funds inour deal flow.
· Based on these factors, and with a goal of maintaining a diversified portfolio, impact investments will be an important area for us moving forward to achieve the highest possible returns within sustainable frameworks.
My role at Investinor is to ensure that we incorporate sustainability and impact perspectives into Investinor's investment strategy. I also make sure my colleagues at Investinor stay updated on methodologies, tools, and competencies in the field. As an active owner, I have the pleasure of working with many ofour fund managers and companies as a sustainability and impact sparringpartner.
What’s the most exciting part of working in impact investment?
The impact investment field provides us with a framework for achieving sustainability results while also generating financial returns. Given the major sustainability challenges the world needs to solve, this opens up significant business opportunities for the private sector. Here, we get two-for-one: both sustainability impact and financial returns. The role of the finance industry in this transition is fascinating.
What are the biggest challenges of impact investing in Norway today?
Historically, Norwegian players have not had a unified approach to impact investing. For companies seeking funding, this can be challenging, as it isn't sufficiently predictable what "impact investors" prioritize or require in terms of data and other inputs. For us as a fund investor, it's also challenging, as it hasn’t always been easy to compare various impact funds.
What do you think could help make it easier?
Although impact investing is fundamentally a methodology or framework for investors, the field has the potential to steer various players in the same direction. Companies, investors, banks, government agencies, and the aid sector can all work within a common framework, each contributing in their own way .Overall, this can be a powerful tool to help us reach the sustainability goals. A unified approach would make it easier to bring stakeholders together around impact investments.
Do youhave a personal passion in this field? If so, what is it?
When discussing sustainability broadly, there is far too little focus on "materiality." Particularly from the SMB-segment we invest in, we see that companies are pressured to spend time and resources focusing on and reporting on generic "non-material" sustainability topics, rather than focusing on the type of product they've developed. The key lies in promoting companies that, through innovation, have created products addressing one or more sustainability challenges (handprint/impact). That’s where the real potential for significant impact lies! Both EU regulatory requirements and existing frameworks for impact investments provide a good foundation to balance this.
Finally, you have the floor. What’s the one question you’d like to ask the NorNAB network?
From someone who has previously worked with sustainability from the aid sector,at the local municipal level, and now from a finance perspective, I believe there's still a lot of potential for private and public actors to complement eachother. With this, even greater synergies can be achieved, where the"different types of funding" can have a multiplier effect by working together. How can we in the NorNAB network work together to make this happen?
