What is ‘place based’ impact investing?

We take an inclusive approach to social impact investing, which means we take pensions savings and reinvest these back into communities to improve quality of life and to generate social and economic benefits – like addressing health inequality, creating jobs, and improving the local environment and transport links.

How do we define the local need for sustainable investing?

We work with local leaders and communities to understand and define their specific need for investment. Then we work with colleagues across our business to make sure we are the right partners to deliver this need – and identify which elements of our Group are best placed to support this.

This engagement also enables us to identify the social outcomes we want to drive, by examining the tangible, societal and financial requirements of the place and the expertise and investment required to drive a real impact. This strategy ensures that we create the appropriate blueprint for success.

Local engagement and ongoing optimisation drive long term local impact

We take the responsibility of regenerating towns and cities seriously: we recognise that we are only ever successful if our investments meet social need, both nationally (for example, in clean energy or net zero projects) and within local communities. This means we continually reflect on the impact we can deliver and seek ways to continue to better society.

We work to bring in real local voices to our decision making – for example, through technology, deep, multi-phase community engagement, and using multi language digital adverts on social media. We use these approaches to invite live regional feedback on plans from the diverse communities we are investing in.

Our approach

You can find out more about our approach by watching our recent interview with Dame Elizabeth Corley, Chair of the Impact Investing Institute. Pete Gladwell, Group Social Impact & Investment Director discusses what drives our place-based impact investment.

Watch the video on Asset TV here.

Place partnership for the future

Through our unique approach, aligned with sustainable responsible investing, we have grown an unrivalled network of partners across a range of industries, developing an ecosystem which can cross-pollinate solutions to some of society’s biggest challenges. One of these challenges includes reviving Britain’s high streets.

Our approach is long term: we want to create places where people choose to live many decades in the future. Growth and investment selections are fundamentally shaped by meeting societal need, for current and future societies.  This is good for society and enhances our investment performance over the long term.