Featured Pathways

More pathways

Banking Essentials - Part I

This pathway will walk us through the basics of banks, starting with some of the different types and their main functions, then starting to look at the regulation faced by the banks, both before and after the Global Financial Crisis.

Greenwashing

Greenwashing is the act of distributing false information about something being more environmentally friendly than it actually is.

More pathways

Book a demo

Pricing

Ready to get started?

Plans & Membership

Our Platform

Expert led content

+1,000 expert presented, on-demand video modules

Learning analytics

Keep track of learning progress with our comprehensive data

Interactive learning

Engage with our video hotspots and knowledge check-ins

Testing & certification

Gain CPD / CPE credits and professional certification

Managed learning

Build, scale and manage your organisation’s learning

Integrations

Connect Finance Unlocked to your current platform

Featured Content

More featured content

Tackling the Cost of Living Crisis

In this video, Max discusses the cost-of-living crisis currently enveloping the UK. He examines its impact on households as well as the overall economy.

CSR and Sustainability in Financial Services

In the first video of this two-part video series, Elisa introduces us to sustainability. She begins by looking at the difference between sustainability and corporate social responsibility, two terms that can be easily confused.

More featured content

Book a demo

Pricing

Ready to get started?

Featured Pathways

More pathways

Banking Essentials - Part I

This pathway will walk us through the basics of banks, starting with some of the different types and their main functions, then starting to look at the regulation faced by the banks, both before and after the Global Financial Crisis.

Greenwashing

Greenwashing is the act of distributing false information about something being more environmentally friendly than it actually is.

More pathways

Book a demo

Pricing

Ready to get started?

Plans & Membership

Our Platform

Expert led content

+1,000 expert presented, on-demand video modules

Learning analytics

Keep track of learning progress with our comprehensive data

Interactive learning

Engage with our video hotspots and knowledge check-ins

Testing & certification

Gain CPD / CPE credits and professional certification

Managed learning

Build, scale and manage your organisation’s learning

Integrations

Connect Finance Unlocked to your current platform

Featured Content

More featured content

Tackling the Cost of Living Crisis

In this video, Max discusses the cost-of-living crisis currently enveloping the UK. He examines its impact on households as well as the overall economy.

CSR and Sustainability in Financial Services

In the first video of this two-part video series, Elisa introduces us to sustainability. She begins by looking at the difference between sustainability and corporate social responsibility, two terms that can be easily confused.

More featured content

Book a demo

Pricing

Ready to get started?

Book a demo

Pricing

Ready to get started?

Impact Through Investment Management

Impact Through Investment Management

Sir Ronald Cohen

Father of impact investing

The impact revolution was started by consumers and talent, primarily among young people. Investors noticed this, realized that it would affect the profitability of their portfolios, and began to shift their investments in the direction of companies that create less harm or have a positive impact. In this video, Sir Ronald provides examples of how revolutions in investing have changed the world, and further explores how certain types of investors can be brought into the impact investigation revolution.

The impact revolution was started by consumers and talent, primarily among young people. Investors noticed this, realized that it would affect the profitability of their portfolios, and began to shift their investments in the direction of companies that create less harm or have a positive impact. In this video, Sir Ronald provides examples of how revolutions in investing have changed the world, and further explores how certain types of investors can be brought into the impact investigation revolution.

Now free to watch

This video is now available for free. It is also part of a premium, accredited video course. Sign up for a 7-day free trial to watch more.

Impact Through Investment Management

18 mins 45 secs

Overview

The impact revolution was started by consumers and talent, primarily among young people. Investors noticed this, realized that it would affect the profitability of their portfolios, and began to shift their investment in the direction of companies that create less harm or create positive impact. Today it's investors who can help us to achieve our next important goal, which is impact transparency, through impact accounting.

Key learning objectives:

  • Give examples of how revolutions in investing have changed the world

  • Answer whether disruptive company models can create better returns

  • Explore how certain types of investors can be brought into the impact investigation revolution

Now free to watch

This video is now available for free. It is also part of a premium, accredited video course. Sign up for a 7-day free trial to watch more.

Summary

How had the measurement of risk changed in the early 1950s?

Some professors, Moskovitz among them, at the University of Chicago in the early '50s, hit on the idea of looking at risk with a historical view and then trying to extrapolate it forward. So they looked back at how much certain stocks had gone up and down, the volatility, as we came to call it, and different asset classes like bonds and equities relative to one another.

How was diversification born from measuring risk?

Diversification, up until then, had been limited to putting usually 70% of your portfolio into the equities of your national stock market and 30% into the government bonds of your country. 

Diversification across asset classes began to be talked about, and the risk adjusted returns of these different asset classes, such as venture capital and private equity and real estate and infrastructure and hedge funds made their way into investment thinking and led to a transformation of portfolios away from stocks and bonds of your national markets to multi-asset class investment.

How did measuring risk end up creating venture capital funds?

No one had previously thought that you could include a fund that has a 10 year life, is completely liquid, is used to back entrepreneurs who often haven't had much business experience to achieve grandiose change, as it was then viewed. Venture capital funded the tech revolution, which has affected all of our lives. It also funded globalisation, because it opened the door to investment in emerging markets, which had been considered very risky at the time, but on a risk adjusted basis, found their way into all portfolios virtually.

How will impact investing become beneficial to companies?

We're seeing investors direct their investment to companies that optimize risk return and impact, meaning that they're avoiding the companies that they're creating harm and aiming their investments at the companies that are doing good. They've come to the conclusion that the returns will be improved, because the talent will gravitate to these companies, consumers will prefer them, and the momentum in investment markets seeking these companies keep increasing. 

Is it realistic to expect that impact investing is going to disrupt the company models and that it will result in better financial returns?

Well, we can see how Tesla has disrupted the automobile industry. It was a hundred year old industry with very heavily entrenched competitors. But they had a purpose. The purpose was to introduce electric vehicles that shifted us away from the combustion engine. And he has achieved that, which is why we see investors piling into his stock. So the disruption will come from new entrants just as it did when technology arrived, and new entrants who often will use technology to bring an impact dimension to that company's business model.

How has Fintech disrupted traditional banking models?

If you look at the banking model, it was based on charging more for more vulnerable people, because they represented a bigger risk of a bad loan. However, new models seek to assess the creditworthiness of borrowers on the basis of that cell phone usage, how reliable they appear as users of a phone and translate that into their reliability and meeting their financial obligations. 

What can be done to influence pension funds into investing for impact?

It's important that governments give clear signals to pension fund trustees that they are expected now to take into consideration, not just the financial returns of the investments they consider, but also the impact on people and the environment that they caused.

What is the difference between ESG and impact investment?

Both shared the same intention to create positive impacts or at least in the case of ESG today, to reduce negative impacts. Impact investing seeks to achieve positive impacts as well as reducing negative ones. But the big difference between the two is the ESG thus far, hasn't focused on measuring these impacts, whereas impact investing has been defined by both the intention and the measurement of the impact. 

 

Now free to watch

This video is now available for free. It is also part of a premium, accredited video course. Sign up for a 7-day free trial to watch more.

Sir Ronald Cohen

Sir Ronald Cohen

Sir Ronald Cohen is the Chairman of the Global Steering Group for Impact Investment, the Impact-Weighted Accounts Initiative at Harvard Business School and The Portland Trust. At the start of his career, he co-founded the private equity firm Apax Partners. In 2020, he wrote the bestselling book “Impact: Reshaping capitalism to drive real change”. Considered the Father of Social Investment, in 2012 he received the Rockefeller Foundation’s Innovation Award for innovation in social finance.

There are no available videos from "Sir Ronald Cohen"