 Felly, mae'n ddweud yn gweithio am y cyfle ac mae'r ddweud yn ddefnyddio i'r gwahanol yn gwahau. Mae'n… mae'n gweithio ar y dyfodol o gweithio. Mae'n ymddangos i. Mae'n ddweud i, Sally Bundock. Mae'n ysgrifennidau a'r dyfodol yn Ysgrifennidau BBC. Felly, mae'n ddiddor i gael! Mae'n ddiwyddo i ni wedi gwneud, mae'n fawr, ond mae'n ddiddor i'r ddiddor i'u ddiddor i'r ddiddor i'r ddiddor i'r ddiddor. Ond yna mae'r cyflydd gafod yr oedd gan eich iawn neu yr angen, mae'n i gremio ar y gwaith.繁 mae rhan o'n arwain fel hyn, dyma i'n iawn. Rydw i'n holl ffordd ar wahist o merydd yn ôl iawn i'n mwynhau, o ddweud o'r newydd o bosid, o ddwylo cyariaeth o'r polotifon. Rydym ni'n mynd i ddim yn y ni o'r negredu ar Speiddagol, oherwydd roedd y cynnig meir i ddweud, o'r mwyaf, y gallai ganddru ddechrau'n hyn o ddweud yn fwyaf, Now normally I dedicated about three minutes with my guests on live television we've got one out so we can really dig deep into this topic and I'm hoping that with my fantastic panel here that it will be extremely practical as well and it won't be so much about theory but it will be about what's going on already in practice and on what we can do better in the future. So let me introduce you to the panel starting with the gentleman next to me. Prif Weinidd, Prif Weinidd, Dymaarch, Lars Lachrassmysen, It's great to have him with us this morning. Next to him we have Chetna Sinha, Chetna is the founder and chair of the Mandeshu Foundation in India. I'm sure you're well aware that she is one of the co-chairs of this year's World Economic Forum as well. Next to Chetna we've got Akinwumi Ayodeshi Adesina, who's president of the African Development Bank. Last but by no means least we have Philip Hildebrand, who's vice chairman of Black Rock. Welcome to all the panellists. What we're grappling with is how do we unlock capital to scale social and environmental impact and accelerate progress on sustainable development goals. I'm sure we're all agreed in the room that we do need concerted collective action given the current context that we're seeing around the world at the moment. Just to give you an idea of where we are, a BGC report out recently says there's roughly 23 trillion US dollars in general in socially responsible investing at the moment with about 9 trillion US dollars of this in sustainable investments more specifically. When it comes to the size of the impact investing market, it's actually quite difficult to pinpoint that and come to a conclusion, but it can range sort of between 60 and 200 billion dollars. So impact investing does depend on who you ask, but obviously there's various reports out there that try and estimate what's going on in the world at the moment. So if we begin, I'm going to ask Philip to start with just to talk about some of the different types of investment out there, different types of vehicles for investment that do you have a social impact? Because Philip, there are various different ways of doing this, aren't there? Yes, thank you for having me on this panel. This is a very important topic. Let me just say first, I think three things are coming together that are creating, I believe, a tremendous window of opportunity here in the space of impact investing. The first one is there now an increasing number of serious empirical studies that are beginning to show that the old story that by doing good, you lose on profitability, that that may not be true. Now, I want to say it's early days. I think a lot more work needs to be done in this space, but in the last couple of years, we've seen some very serious studies, a big meta study that looked at a huge 2,000 research papers, a few things at Harvard, a couple of industry studies that are beginning to show that they may not be a negative trade-off if you focus your investments around sustainability goals broadly defined. Indeed, some of these studies are beginning to show that what probably seems intuitive for many of you that there could be a positive trade-off if you think of it in terms of the long term. We refer to this as sustained financial performance. So this is a big development. If we can begin to show that sustained financial performance increases by incorporating sustainability dimensions into your investment products or strategies, that's a game changer. The second thing I want to mention is we have the largest wealth transfer about to take place or taking place as we speak, intergenerationally, that we've ever seen in the history of humanity. It is clear to me when you look at clients that this new generation that is inheriting this enormous wealth has evolved in terms of its own social values and what it wants to see happen with its money. This, again, I think can be an enormous sort of game changer in a sense in terms of an evolution, if you like, of social values. And the third one that gives me hope is that technology here as an investment manager, as an asset manager, it is very clear that technology today helps us do this, pursue these sustainability goals in investing in much more efficient ways than we could have done even two, three, five, let alone ten years ago. So these three things together, I think, are creating an industry that is being pushed both by the kind of supply side and the demand side. Clients demand more of it. Technology allows us to do more of it. And finally, if it is indeed true, and the evidence is pointing in this direction, that at least if you think of it in the longer term, there is not a negative opportunity cost. Indeed, there may well be positive effects on performance if you do that. Then it's a very, very powerful kind of three-fold dynamic that is unfolding here. In terms of what the different things we have, you know, it's essentially the famous ESG. This is the way the industry thinks of it today. So you have three dimensions. One of them is incorporating environmental goals into it. The other one is incorporating societal goals into it. Here we're thinking of things like diversity. And then the third one, which is very important in the corporate world, is incorporating governance dimensions into your investment strategies. Again, here you'd be looking at how companies are governed, how boards are organized, et cetera. So it's a very broad world. Impact investing, in a sense, is a meta terminology that covers all of it. I think for the sake of this discussion, it's probably useful if we take this industry standard that has now emerged, ESG, when we think of the various ways in which one can express goals that reach beyond the financial side. But I just want to say to conclude that it's important not to separate too much these goals from the financial side, because if it is true that, in fact, incorporating these goals enhances sustained financial performance, then we have come over the biggest hurdle historically, namely this assumption or this presumption that by doing good, you generate less of a financial return. And this has been, I believe, the biggest obstacle in a way to move this agenda forward. But do you believe, though, that barrier, as it were, that perception is becoming less and less? Because this is a conversation that's been had for quite some time, isn't it? I sort of first learned about it about 10 years ago when I came across an organization that was just doing financial research and reports on projects on around the world so that investors could see the reward, the financial reward of investing in these projects as opposed to just the feeling warm inside that you're doing some good in the world and actually you're throwing money at it but getting nothing in return other than the feeling of doing good. And the things have changed for some time. I think they're changing very rapidly and the reason they're changing is simply because these studies are emerging, technology is allowing us to measure things differently. The financial crisis paradoxically has helped as well because the crisis showed that if you only focus on nominal short-term rates of return on equity, it's really a meaningless concept because a bank might create 25% rate of return on equity but then it blows up and you have a huge kind of damage from it. So I think we learned in the crisis that we need to think in terms of risk-adjusted returns. So this has helped elevate this debate and the data that is now emerging from these studies I think is rapidly changing the way people think about it. I could give you lots of data. I don't want to do that but take my word for it. Many of you know this. There is increasing evidence that if you think of this in the longer term, there is no cost involved in terms of financial return. And Al Gore yesterday quoted some statistics. I have a bunch here. There's a big study that was done at Harvard recently. I'm optimistic. Now if it turns out that these studies are wrong and there is a financial cost to it even in the longer term, then it becomes an issue of societal norms and values. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't invest this way but at the moment I tell you that when I look at the evidence that is emerging, I'm not the scientist here but my guess is that we will end up in a pretty good place where the data actually underpins the idea that you can create sustained value by incorporating these dimensions into your investment products and strategies. And you'll notice here on the panel, we've got all the stakeholders here. So we've got investment finance, we've got Development Bank, we have Chetna who's running a fund that's doing a lot of this already and we have government represented with a Prime Minister. So if you sort of think about all the stakeholders that you need to be involved in this process for it to work, for it to be successful, we kind of have them all represented here. Prime Minister do tell us about how you've been implementing social impact investment in Denmark in order to see significant change in the environment when it comes to the climate? Well, first of all, I would like to say that I... First of all, thank you for having me and then I would like to say that I totally agree with you. There's a good reason to be optimistic about all this because there's a very good business case out there. I mean, now we have adopted the Sustainability Development Goals and we reached an agreement in Paris and now we have to deliver and of course it comes with a multi-trillion US dollar price tag but it also comes with a lot of good business opportunities. And from a Danish point of view, I mean, we have managed to decouple economic growth from any increase in energy consumption during the last three decades. So we have a lot of skills in this area when it comes to renewable energy, wastewater management, et cetera, et cetera. And our businesses want to reach out. So what we need to do is to deliver a framework because what they also want is predictability. So that's why we have taken two initiatives. First of all, we are going very soon to establish an SDG fund in close cooperation with the pension funds in Denmark. Just explain SDG fund for those who don't understand. The Sustainable Development Goals. So it's a fund in order to reach these very important goals adopted in UN two years ago. And it is a cooperation between the government and the Danish pension funds. I mean, the interest rate is low right now. There's a lot of funding possibilities and there's a lot of patience in our pension funds. So they are willing to invest in this and we expect on a basis of one billion basis to invest in projects equivalent to like five billion US dollars. So that's one important initiative. And how did that collaboration begin between government and pension funds in Denmark? It was a governmental initiative. I mean, because I had the honour to chair the UN General Assembly when we adopted these SDGs. And it has been a cross-party Danish priority for many years to push this agenda. And that's, would you argue that's why it's been successful? Because you've kind of taken the ball by the horns. Yeah, I would say so. And you've got cross-party support for it and you've pushed it. Yes, of course. I mean, when the election campaign is coming up, I would argue that there's a huge difference between me and the opposition. But in reality, I mean, Denmark is a consensus society. And in this field of taking on international responsibility in this sustainable agenda, there is a broad alliance in the Danish parliament. So it was very easy to take this initiative. And on the top of a few taxpayers' money, invite the social partners to add up in top of that. So we are going to launch this SDG fund very soon. And another important initiative is the new international framework called P4G, partnering for Global Goals and Green Growth, which we launched during the last UN General Assembly. And until now, we have eight other countries on board, among them Ethiopia and Africa, but also countries as Vietnam, Mexico, South Korea, et cetera. And the C40 network, which consists of the 92 big cities around the world. And just yesterday, I signed up with a memorandum of understanding. And the idea behind this is exactly the same, to encourage governments to describe a concrete strategy in order to reach out for fulfilling these goals and bring private companies on board. And just briefly, before bringing others in the conversation, when you go about that, trying to encourage other governments to follow suit, what is the response like? Is there momentum elsewhere? I think there's a momentum. Because there are so many good arguments behind this. And I mean, if you're not a believer in the climate agenda and we are going to listen to the American president later today, then you could reach out for other arguments. I mean, if you look at Europe right now, there's this refugee pressure on Europe and migration pressure. And so even if you are not a true believer in the SDGs, it is in our own best self-interest to unlock the huge potential in Africa in order to solve what is happening right now with this pressure on Europe. So whether it's the environment or just being idealistic about things or be pragmatic about the pressure on Europe, you could choose any road. And it will lead to the same conclusion that we need to invest more in Africa to unlock the potential. Well, let's bring it again. And he's sitting forward and listening intently. He's saying, yes, I completely agree with that. Absolutely. I don't want to put words in your mouth. But give us your take on this conversation and your experience in Africa. I mean, our lead story this morning on BBC World News was the chronic drought in South Sudan and the difficulties there and the need that they have there. That's just one part. Yeah, well, I think that for me it's... I don't see any investment that one would make that's not impact-related. We can talk about whether it's blended finance, whether it is social impact investing, whatever it is. But at the end of the day, we have to really understand that when we're investing, we're investing for collective good. And investing in collective good means that some of the things that you mentioned, the environment matters. We all live on a planet. We have to make sure that that works. The second one is that we have to make sure that there's social impact. Because I was saying about the economic growth rates in Africa, we have projected this year that it's going to be 4.1% GDP growth rate. Okay, it's awful. What does that really mean? Nobody eats GDP. I really have to work and make sure we can leap millions of people out of poverty. But to do that, we need to be able to get financing to do a number of things. Access to power. 6.45 million Africans today don't have access to electricity. And so solving that problem is fundamental to how you get sustained growth on the continent. You were talking about the whole issue of manufacturing and stunting. You've got 54 million kids in Africa that are stunting. So if you have stunting economies today, I mean children today, you're going to have stunting economies tomorrow. So we've got to find a way in which we finance this. So for us as a bank, we set up as a development, we're a development finance institution. So all we do is all about impact, right? And we take social issues very important. We think environmental issues are very important. Let me give you some examples for us. We invest about $10 billion a year and it goes into all kinds of sectors, energy, infrastructure, waters, sanitation and things like that. But for us, the real issue is the issue of how you blend concessional finance with commercial finance. So if you want to really do something that is going to lead to a singular amount of impact, you have to ask, how do I reduce the risk? How do I price in such a way that that investment would normally occur from the commercial side if you blend it with commercial financing? And we've been doing that. I want to talk about one particular issue, which is how do you provide that kind of financing, say for dealing with the issue of nutrition, which also the Prime Minister was alluding to that. We think that it's important to flow today. Nutrition such as impact bonds that will allow us to be able to raise money off the capital markets and use our triple A rating to bring that money in. And then we can blend that finance for countries to be able to front load critically important investment in nutrition. Because for nutrition for me, it's all about the brain, right? It's all about the grain matter, right? I can fix road, I can fix rail, I can fix anything else, but I can fix a brain cell when it's dead. Okay. And so it's about how do you invest optimally in nutrition? It's not obvious to the commercial sector that they will do that, but we believe from the development side that we'll do that. So floating nutrition such as impact bond, it's one that we want to do. The other one that I want to mention has to be- Sorry, can I just interject there for a moment? You know, you mentioned this social impact bond. You say you want to do that. It sounds like, you know, just throw it out there. How dear are you to seeing that happen or how easy or difficult will it be to make that happen? Well, first and foremost is that we have facilities that can credit enhance any country that goes on to the market to borrow money, to actually do those burns. And so as a bank, we think that we need to scale up investment for nutrition. We need to support private sector that is actually doing high energy foods in Africa, but they need access to finance at a lower interest rate than they would normally get for that kind of a thing. So that's a role of the commercial development bank like ours. We can provide that kind of blended finance for that to happen. But I was also going to say something about the issue of women. So when we talk about social impact investment and you look at Africa, for example, women are the ones that don't have access to finance. So 95%, almost 95% of the farmers in Africa are women, but they don't have access to finance. So we set up this fund that is called Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa, with the goal of mobilising $3 billion, specifically for women in Africa. So we want to du-risk the financial markets to lend more to women. We want to also use blended finance to make sure that they can get access to... And just explain what blended finance is for those who don't understand. So blended finance for us is you take commercial finance, which is we have a commercial arm of the bank. We also have a concessionary part of the bank. So we take that concessionary part of our money and we blend it with the commercial side so that your weighted access rate interest rate goes down to be able to make those investments. And I think that that is critical if you're going to do anything that will have social impact because the private sector will not normally do things like water, sanitation, investing in youth unless you make it easier for them to be able to have access to finance at a lower interest rate. Okay, Chetna, let's bring you in at this point because you are kind of across the board in India. You have a fund where you're raising the finance but you're actually seeing it implemented and seeing projects outworked, which are having a social impact. So just talk us through your experience of practical ways, ways that have worked where you've raised the funds, it's been channeled in the right place and it's having the impact. Sure, thank you very much. I would like to share that, I mean, I have started a women's bank and why bank and not my MFI because one thing was very clear that women wanted to do savings, rural women who are in the remote locations, they wanted to do savings. And another thing is that to provide them access to finance at a lower rate so that they can, I mean, they can increase their business in a much more profitable way. So that bank actually did not get any support from outside, it's a homegrown bank. I will share a story of women who came to the bank and she mortgaged gold to take loan. I asked her, why are you taking loan? She said that you don't realize there's such a bad drought and I am mortgaging my gold to buy a fodder for my animals. And then she added that before drought used to happen but water was there. The problem was employment. But now when drought happens, there is no water and she asks me the question that can I mortgage gold and get water? I have no answer. And I am telling exactly the brain that the deer brain, it is so important to understand that their brains are working on sustainable development goals but our brains are still a bit lazier in going to those areas. And she was asking the right question. So we started a cattle camp, we started investing in water but now I'm coming to the thing which you mentioned about the fund. So these are the women from whom I've learned so much. And we started the bank, it is a 20 years bank with no outside support. Women are running with all these animals, conserving water, everything and the investment in microfinance industry is huge. In India we have 20 billion dollar industry. It gives access to finance to women very costly. Investors make lot of money, yes. But why women are empowered because they are paying high interest and proving themselves, repaying in time so that investors get their money back. So it's actually women are much more smarter in achieving those goals. Now I come to the third thing which actually from the same women who wanted to go to the second stage of finance where they made very clear we don't want this costly access to finance. So then why not that? That was the time we thought that they need affordable finance for micro enterprise in rural area. Why not start a fund? And that's how I started a alternative investment fund which is a debt financing. We're registered at Stock Exchange Board of India. So from reserve bank our women went to Stock Exchange Board for setting up the micro enterprise. And this fund is a debt financing. I'm just telling a little bit of, like it will provide loans through the institution to these women to go to the second level of micro enterprise and if these women they success they are going to the, I mean if you have a rural micro enterprise in rural India the jobs are going to create for youth that is one. Second the pressure on agriculture population is going to reduce. So I have created a one billion rupee fund and launched here for our women and it's actually matching with sustainable development goals but still I would like to say that credibility goes to those women who are taking the risk, who are paying the high interest showing it the success and showing it the path. Now I would just come to the second part. There are some obstacles also which we need to understand. And I would just like to say about the research what is available on these issues as far as environment, global warming. We do talk about this. I will again share another story which actually was, I was just, I mean it was so startling that we, one of a partner organisation in Assam, North East India they run a cocoon bank which means that women who are conserving cocoons who are a silk weavers and they create a bank of cocoons and earn their income. Now these women were saying that our cocoons, the silk worm is dying before in the cocoon and we don't know why. These women are tribal women. They have never done any carbon emissions. They have never flew. They have never got into the cars, nothing. But today in the jungles where they are collecting the cocoons, their cocoons are dying and they don't know why they are dying. But it is a very clear, and they are losing their income. So it is a very clear indication that this is the global warming which is affecting the last mine. And we don't even have information of that. I mean idea had no idea. And then I started talking to my colleagues like see the how global warming is affecting. So it is so important to understand this unless we understand then again we can bring the capital into it. And I would just like to see that you know there are innovative ways we can get the capital into it. And people, I mean again you made a very right point that you don't lose. I'm not even talking of trade of collective good. What I'm saying is that microfinance investors have gotten so much of money. Women have empowered them. You will get the returns. In alternative investment fund which we are having for micro women enterprise, we have three categories. Those who do not want to lose their returns, find, come, invest, get both, get your returns and sleep well at night because you are investing in our women. Do that. Those who are ready to have an impact investment come together will create an ecosystem for these women. We'll have a business clinics for them. We'll have an investment clinics for them. We'll create, we'll provide the access to knowledge to these women and private capital is not just unlocking capital and investing. Investing is one part, but creating those business clinic and knowledge for these communities and they know how to conserve. I mean, I'm just humbled how women, they talked about water and animals. So they know it's a matter of us to listening to them and as far as capital innovation are concerned, those things we can work out if we have a data. But the most important thing when the solution comes, we can invest in capital, we can get the return, but if we don't listen to them, everybody lose. So at the end, I would just say that our women are so ambitious, they are not talking about going beyond poverty. They always say that we don't have, we don't want poor solutions to poor people. No, they talk of wealth creation, wealth generation and not of individual wealth, wealth of society. Now, let's bring you in the audience. Do you have questions or comments or even perhaps something you've seen work somewhere that you think is worth sharing in this environment now? If you've got a question for the panel, please obviously show your hand and then when you've got the microphone, please tell me what your name is and where you're from and then what your question or comment is. If there's any out there, I know it's always, here we go, this gentleman here, oh two in fact. All right, we start here. And if you could say who your question is for as well, that would be great. My question is broad, I'm rich fuller from pure earth. My question is broadly to the panel. I'm wondering whether you're seeing any impact of pollution in the investment portfolios that you're concerned about and whether the toxics agenda, not just carbon, but also the toxics agenda, air pollution or soil and chemicals, are they showing up anywhere in your consideration? Who would like to respond to that? Maybe I can have a crack at this. So on the demand side, in other words, what are clients asking? What we've seen the last couple of years is a rapid acceleration of sort of customization of what kind of exposure somebody would like to have. And this again, technology here plays a big role because with the new, particularly in the passive space, with the new investment products where you can screen, you can take certain exposures out of it and we can generate these new products at relatively low cost. What we are seeing is it used to start with fairly straightforward kind of what you would expect. I don't want any, I want you to screen my investment exposure through a product that, for instance, takes out weapon manufacturing. That's a fairly classic one. Another classic one, you've seen the Norgas Fund, the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world, has basically said, we're not going to invest anymore in any oil production. So they have essentially screened their portfolio or eliminated any investments in companies that are in this industry. And what we're now beginning to see is because these new ETFs and other passive products make it possible, you're starting to see much more tailor-made desires being expressed for eliminating certain things. So I would call this the kind of first, second generation of investment products. First, you had very simple screening demands and now you're beginning to see more tailor-made, fairly specific wishes that are being expressed and that can be replicated or produced fairly easily in terms of technologies or air pollution. Again, there's one such example where you could see clients that say, I want to invest, but I want to make sure that I'm not invested in any heavy polluters, for instance, right? Apart from the CO2 emission story. So this is now, it's beginning to be possible. Now, we still need to have some scale. We still need to have some profitability in order to produce such a new ETF. If this ETF is only going to be bought up by one person, it may not be economically feasible, but because the cost of producing these investment products has gone down so much, it is now becoming much easier to kind of come up with very innovative and very targeted specific products that can reflect these desires. So, for instance, if a pension fund comes and says we'd like to have exposure to the equity markets in Europe, because we like Europe right now, but we'd like you to screen any heavy polluters of a specific substance out of that, provided there's enough money going into this product so we can produce it at scale, that is now possible. And so this is why I think technology here has really been a big game changer in the investment industry, and this is only the beginning. You know, cost, as with everything in technology, costs the clients very rapidly, and so as cost the clients, you can create much more tailor-made solutions. Can I just ask you as well, on the demand side, do you find that clients come to you with their requests for, say, a social impact investment? Do they have specific issues in mind usually? Do they come to you and say, actually it's climate that I'm interested in, or actually it's poverty in Africa or whatever? Yeah, I would say it's twofold. You have certain clients that have very clear ideas. They've studied this closely. They have an investment committee that has reached certain conclusions of what they want, and then it's really a matter of meeting their demands, and this is where often technology plays an important role. You have other types of clients who are perhaps at an earlier stage in their evolution, who say, you know, we really care about this, but we don't really know yet what to do. What are our options? What can we do? Given the amount of money we want to invest, what is feasible economically, you know, we don't want to have fees to get so high that we can't afford it anymore, and so with those types of clients, you really enter into a dialogue and try to find creative solutions. Now, we as an industry are also still at the beginning in many ways of being able to offer creative solutions on this, so this is, you know, I would say this is, we are in sort of the second inning to take a baseball analogy, both in terms of the sophistication that comes or the specificity of the demands that comes from the clients, as well as the ability of the investment industry to really create adequate solutions for these demands, but it has, I can tell you one thing, that in the last two years, the change both in terms of the clients and the change, the sort of wake up call in the industry to say this is actually a big commercial opportunity, we have to respond to it. There's also sort of macro level, which in the presence of the Prime Minister, you know, I think it's worth mentioning, and President Macron actually made specific reference to this very important in his speech two days ago. It is also increasingly becoming clear that if you pursue this at a country level and you incentivize this type of behavior, say for your pension funds, there is a sort of an additional gain from this, namely that it looks like you're gonna enhance the competitiveness of your country. I don't think it's a coincidence that when you look at the latest competitiveness scores, and again we can argue how accurate they are, the World Economic Forum does one itself, it's not a coincidence, I think, that the Nordic European countries come out being, in many ways, the most competitive countries now in the world. I believe there is a link to this as well, that not only is there hopefully no trade-off from a financial performance perspective at the individual level, but if a country initiates the right policies that incentivizes this type of behavior, that you may also have a sort of second win, namely that the level of your country you can increase your competitiveness. This was a core kind of message for Europe from President Macron yesterday, two days ago, which I think is very important and the experience that we're seeing, the data that is emerging out of the Nordic countries, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think very much underlines this notion that there's a competitiveness gain here too. So, there are, as you can see, there are many dimensions, the client, the investment industry, and governments in terms of policies, whether it's regulatory policy or tax policy, that can kind of create the right incentives. So, I think on the whole, what I see the European story here in terms of demands from clients is very, very rapidly moving, as reflected by President Macron's speech two days ago. Prime Minister, would you like to respond to that, people? No, but I totally agree. I totally agree. I'm pretty sure that, you know, the social cohesion in our society model, the flexibility, that people trust government, is all reasons behind our competitiveness. And that's why it is easy to engage our business community in this international agenda. Yeah, go on, I was going to bring you in. I mean, for us in terms of all the investments that we make, there's a compliance side of it for all of our investments that we make, we look at environmental and social impact assessment for all of our investments. So, that's on the compliance side. But also on the supply side of financing. We have clients that come to us, countries that come to us that want to invest in renewable energy, for example, solar panels in particular countries and stuff like that, or geothermal power plants. So, we also post green bombs to be able to actually get a lot more capital to do that. And that allowed us, for example, to support Syria Leone to build its largest power plant, which is small, but for them it's big, it's 33 megawatts because of that financing. But an area that I see as a huge opportunity where we have to actually crowd in a lot of financing is renewable energy generally in Africa. If you take, for example, the companies that are doing distributed energy in Africa today, they don't have access to financing at a affordable rate because the market is still small and then the risk is still high and they can only get access to commercial financing which is very, very expensive. So, what we've done at the African Development Bank is we've just set up a fund that's a $400 million fund which allows us to provide financing to them on blended finance to be able to get it at a lower rate so that you can accelerate companies that are doing renewable energy but at a smaller scale, they are doing less than 30 megawatts. So, these are the kind of companies that find it difficult to raise money from other investors. So, I think that we need to customise instruments on the supply side but also on the demand side. Just to finish off on the demand side, as you were mentioning, the issue of the last mile in India, this works also for renewable energy as well. You'll find that people want to put up their single solar power in PVs but they can't afford to pay the upfront cost, right? So, we provide financing that allows us to be able to stretch that but it can pay over many years. So, on the supply side, you're pushing renewable energy but on the demand side, you're also making it easy to get consumer credit that allows them to invest in a single solar power in PV systems. Chad, now I can see you want to say something, go on. Yeah, I just want to add two things. One is that one big challenge which we see is that how, as I mentioned about the cocoons, that how this whole industry, the artisans, the craft and all that, how it is dying just because there is not enough access to finance. And here I'm talking about access to finance not to get the loan and repayment but it's about like regular capital flow is required. And I mean revenue capital flow is required and our banks do not have that product. So, why can't we have those type of bonds which are bonds for the artisans which would require that type of finance. Anyway, we are going to launch the second fund will be for that but I just want to bring that in the debate that it's not only just providing and finance and access to finance to artisan but also to cultivating and have those traditions of silk or other looms and looms, all that, that is one. And second which I actually would like to extend about what you made a very important point about the solar. Like country like India has so much of solar energy and we are losing out just because we are not enough innovative. Why can't we have a bonds or unlock a private capital for the human invest in human capital? And how can we do that? I mean, we have so much ideas that when we want to conserve water, we want water engineers who are a local community. We can invest in them. I'm on $1 billion fund as an advisor which is from the government but which will create the ecosystem for such things which we cannot put it but as a public organization or as a government has this. So these are the things which again, how can we have a water engineers? How can we have a soil doctors in the rural area? This and we have to invest to train them and that capital also has to come because we want to invest a human capital for the sustainable development goals. Sure, like that gentleman there had a question if you could pass him the microphone. All the panelists have more or less touched on it. Hang on, could you say who you are, where you're from? I'm from Stuart, I'm a young global leader. So the panel have more or less touched on it but when we talk about impact investment, there's a dominant paradigm in this kind of mega global trend where, as it's been said, there isn't a trade-off between returns and getting a good impact. And I totally see the function of that paradigm. That's how the big capital is going to come into this sector but there's another function that this impact investment trend can and I think should really be focused and we don't want to over-promise. There are lots of areas where finance is needed, where the return is a trade-off or where the risk is just much greater and that should be a function that we should cultivate and not kind of sideline by the idea of not ever having a trade-off and just anecdotally, I have created a company, we up-cycle, we spread into beer, we put all of our dividends into charity. We're offering pretty punchy capital gains to our investors but there's no point in even talking to the funds. Nevertheless, it's been hugely easy to raise a million quid from individuals which suggests there's an appetite, a strong appetite out there for people who want, they want to take a risk, they don't need exactly the same returns that they'd normally expect, they just want to have some epic impact in the world and I'm just inviting that sort of, what is the function of impact investment in the world? Philip, is there room for that kind of product? Yes, I totally agree with you, which is why I mentioned it. I don't think one excludes the other on the contrary and as I suggest that I believe that with this generational wealth transfer, which is not talked about very often, but the numbers are enormous and if it's true that values evolve as generations evolve, I think it's very, very important to make that point as well, to say there may well be cases where the pure financial returns may decline but you're creating societal values which is sort of why our CEO has coined this term which is trying to capture this sustained financial performance and the notion here is or I guess the crisis analogy would be risk adjusted returns. If we can reduce the risk of migration, if we can reduce the risk of extreme popular politics, of civil wars which often are related to environmental crisis for instance, then I think that's an improvement in sustained financial performance even if the actual kind of rate of return may go down and I just want to say a lot of people quote here Milton Friedman from an article in the 70s where he said famously, the business of business is business and most people of course never go and read this article. What they forget is when you read the article, Milton Friedman also talked about societal values. He talks about the fact that of course companies have to operate within societal values and if they don't, their societal license to operate gets withdrawn and I think this points exactly to what you're saying that as these values evolve in societies, I think there's lots of demand for people who want to invest and accept in fact purely financially perhaps a slightly lower rate of return and then of course government has a big role to play. You know in some of these problems that you're facing, the financial returns may be significantly lower and that's where governments have to come in and create the right incentives, cover perhaps the first loss protection. This is not, I don't think we should be naive here, this is not a problem particularly in the developing world that can be solved entirely by the private sector. I'm a firm believer that governments, particularly in the extreme cases, I was with a lady from Chad the other day, talking about an extreme case, government policies will have to come in to support this. Private capital loan cannot be the solution for those cases. Just to say, what you were saying is quite interesting because I interview all the time company bosses, quite young entrepreneurs, founders of companies and I have noticed there's a real surge in young people who are creating companies not to just purely make profits, that's not their motivation at all actually, they're making profits obviously to run as a company and function but almost to be like a social enterprise actually. Social enterprise is almost like a sort of buzzword and that's sort of what Larry Fink, your chief executive was trying to discuss but what response did he get to that report from corporates who he was sort of trying to encourage to think in those terms? Well, I would assume that there's a bias, those who liked it told us and perhaps those who didn't like it so much didn't tell us. Do you feel it's falling, I mean, what appetite is there for it though because here at the World Economic Forum, we're sort of everybody's on that page. For us an important part is talent. I think great companies that over time will sustain great financial performance need great people, particularly in an industry where, in our industry where human resources is really, that's it, you know, we don't have factories and we don't have big machines and so it's people and one of the things that is very clear that again, the average age of BlackRock is 35, so I'm old, I'm no longer a young leader certainly, neither young nor a leader and it is tremendous what you can generate in terms of people wanting to work at companies that have what Larry calls a social purpose. That doesn't mean, we're a listed company, we're highly commercial, we're demanding, but when people begin to feel that it's not a narrow definition of profitability, the effect this has on talent, I can tell you, is extraordinary, the same with diversity by the way, diversity is very hard to implement, we know that, but when companies, when people start to believe that their company actually mean it, the effect it has on the ability to attract talent which is ultimately the key, I think, the decisive factor in terms of whether you're going to be successful or not in the long term, I think is remarkable and I tell you from experience we have seen this and the war for talent after all is perhaps the most challenging thing we face in terms of being successful in the long term. Let's see if we've got some more questions because we've got about 10 minutes to go now, so if you would like to sort of channel the discussion in a certain direction or talk about a particular issue, we've got a lady at the back there, could you remember to say who you are and where you're from? I'm Neha Kirpal, I'm based in India, I'm a young global leader. My question is with a specific focus on mental health, so I know obviously there's a lot of healthcare investment broadly, but at least from where I come from, mental health is typically regarded as a rather unattractive investment option by the private sector and the government somehow hasn't brought it into focus for the scale of the epidemic that it now is. And so I would just love comments about how all of you look at mental health as an impact investment opportunity and what kind of for-profit and not-for-profit models may you consider that you know of or that you may consider worthwhile and that are relevant to solve the problem at the systemic scale that it is today? Thank you. Who would like to respond to that? That's quite a tricky one, isn't it? I mean mental health is not something that's easy to measure or easy to see an outcome, is it? It's quite tricky, that whole issue. In the UK we're seeing a lot of momentum when it comes to talking about it, certainly within the workplace as well actually, and that's to do with a lot of high-profile people taking this on board like Prince Harry, for example, there's one ambassador for mental health and William and Kate, if I can talk about them in those terms. But would anybody like to respond to that? It's quite a tricky one, isn't it? We've talked a lot about practical issues, climate, agriculture, farming, poverty, women. What about mental health? I mean it has been a taboo in our own society for many, many years. But as you just mentioned, I think we have overcome it and we are working on that agenda as well. How we can implement it in this strategy, I must admit, I have never really given it a thought before. Any chat now? Actually, first of all, I really congratulate. I mean, I really liked that you raised this question in this panel. It is so important. And so I'm glad that you raised it. That is first. Second, I would like to say that there are many organizations which are working in mental health. And when I observe those organizations, it is the whole organization has to struggle so much. Not only just, I don't want to describe that, everybody knows it on getting the investment support on one side and then working with the, and it's not only just finance is the issue there, there are so many other issues. So how the finance can come in, I do believe that in that case actually, there has to be a passionate private capital. You need to have that. There's no question. And I think that, I mean, I'm just, I know that I'm not suggesting that, okay, we are starting something like that, but why can't we have a passionate private capital because this is the area where those communities are teaching us to have less egos, to have, like, be humble, which is actually going to help us if we do that. We'll be creating a much better society. So I'm just like. And a kin, I mean, in Africa, it's difficult, isn't it? When you've got so much practical issues right in front of you, you know, serious malnutrition, climate, agriculture, I mean, mental health will just be low down on the list, I assume, for wrong or right, you know. Well, I mean, I'm not going to talk just about mental health. I think health in general, you know, all the way from nutrition dealing with malaria, for example, in Africa, it's a big issue. HIV, AIDS, access to drugs and things like that are big issues. So, but I think that the same principles apply, you know, to your point. These are areas in which the private sector will not invest in. But we know that for collective good of all of us, as human beings, we need to invest in those areas. So that's where our government needs to come in. So if it has to be in terms of how you have mental care, support facilities and how they can be supported, in terms of medication and access to that, how that can be supported, and those kinds of companies that want to take on those kinds of things, how does government give them some kind of tax incentives to be able to do it, or that will make a case. But I do want to say something about what you were saying about the young people, because I think it's an area in which we should actually have a lot more focus on, in fact, investing. Take, for example, Europe today. You've got lots of African young people getting boats, getting boats, and follow them on the Mediterranean Sea. And as president of the African Development Bank, I see that my heart breaks. And yet I know their future is not in Europe. Their future is also not at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. So the future actually has to be in Africa where they can take the ideas that can be entrepreneurial and get the financing to turn their great ideas into great businesses. And so for us at the African Development Bank, we're taking a big step on this. We've launched a major program to help African countries to create 25 million jobs over the next 10 years. That's going to be an I-60 sector. It's going to be small and medium-sized enterprises, but also in the agriculture sector. I've got here a vice president, for example, for agriculture at the African Development Bank and also my vice president for private sector Pierre Gouslein and Jennifer here. What we are trying to do is ask a bank, we've got to put our capital to risk for the young people. A young person walks into a bank or to a private equity firm. I have a great idea, I need money. Nobody's going to think the ideas are ever going to thrive. Well, they told Bill Gates that also and look at him today. So what we are trying to do is set up a fund in which we can say, here is a grant facility for the first phase of your business. You have a take-off. And the next phase of your business have an equity that can go into that and allow your business to grow. Then in the first phase of your business when you've built a cash flow history, then you can begin then to have risk-sharing facilities that allows the banks then to be able to lend to them. But I really believe that we've got to really begin to look at how to get impact invested into allowing young people to thrive with their ideas and build entrepreneurship. And I can think of anything more important for us then to do that. OK, we are almost out of time. So what I'd like to do now is ask each panelist to tell me what is the most important thing that you feel we need to do in terms of moving forward to see more social impact investment in terms in the light of our discussion in the last hour. I know that's quite tricky. And then we will conclude. So you're passing it on. I'll be the final one. We'll come to you last. So Chetna, do you want to go first? The one most important thing. In a short sentence, please. Sure. The most important thing I believe is that listen to people, listen to women and listen to communities. I know that they have a vision of achieving the sustainable development goals. They have the solutions. Philip. Look, I guess I would say the most important thing that we face as humanity is that from a financial perspective that finance can be an important, not the only one, but an important catalyst of change in terms of climate change. Because it seems to me that, again, I'm not a scientist, but it seems to me fairly clear that if we don't, if we can't rapidly create an improvement, at least, change the trajectory around climate change, then everything else becomes unbelievably difficult if manageable at all. If you have no water in large parts of Africa or India, then all the capital in the world isn't really going to change that. So I think if we really think about first-order problems, to try to create the structure so that finance can be an important catalyst of change in terms of climate change, that seems to me the most important challenge. Super. We've got about 30 seconds. Akin. Well, I think that to solve Africa's big challenges, we need a lot of capital. And that's why the African Development Bank is, we're launching this year, 7 to the 9 of November, what's called the Africa Investment Forum. It is to take all the global pension funds and sovereign world funds, and the ones in Africa, they risk them so they can invest in energy, power, water roads. All I'm trying to say is that the biggest impact will come when the capital actually gets the risk to go to where it needs to go. And finally, Prime Minister. Yeah, I would say just stay focused because this is a good course and whether you use your brain or your heart, you reach this in conclusion. And that's what fills me with optimism. For instance, talking about aid to Africa a decade ago, it would have been some people for idealistic reasons. Now it is in and it has always been, but it's in a common interest. So even though people, those people who are not as idealistic as others, if they use the brain instead of just feeling with the heart, then we reach the same conclusion. There's no alternative to solving these problems. I'd like to thank all our panellists. We've gone over by about 47 seconds. So I think we've done rather well. And thank you so much too.