Who we are

European Impact Investing Luxembourg seeks to play the role of an information exchange platform between stakeholders of the impact investing space. EIIL’s approach is impartial with respect to various stakeholders.

The European Impact Investing Luxembourg is an open initiative supported by a group of Luxembourg-based firms in the financial services sector that seeks to:

Contribute to the development of the impact investing sector
Facilitate initiatives in this area within Luxembourg
Promote the Luxembourg's financial centre's capacity to support a coordinate practice of impact finance

Leading private banking centre with a long time engagement in responsible finance, Luxembourg is well positioned to play a catalytic role for impact investing on its pathway towards becoming a mainstream asset class.

The European Impact Investing Luxembourg wants to play the role of an impartial information exchange platform between stakeholders of the impact investing space. Its activity is currently structured in five working groups:

About Impact Investing

Impact investing regroups all the investments whose intention is to generate a measurable positive social or environmental impact alongside a financial return.
It therefore addresses different investment areas such as social inclusion, education, healthcare, housing, care of elderly people, food, agriculture and environment.

Impact investing uses a broad range of financial instruments ranging from microfinance to debt and equity or quasi equity products.
Impact investing offers new opportunities to a wide variety of stakeholders in the social sector: with social issues to be solved growing at a faster pace than philanthropic resources available to solve, organisations in the development sector as well as emerging social enterprises seek access to a new investor community pursuing investment opportunities that not only generate a financial return but also deliver tangible benefits to society.

On the side of governments the inability to sustain the European welfare state concept based on the traditional tax-based funding models leads to innovate investment products that allow delegating the delivery of social services and their funding to private sector actors, based on clearly defined social performance indicators.

Market consensus has emerged around four core characteristics to define the practice of impact investing:

Intentionality:
it is essential for the investors to have the intention to produce through their investments a social and/or environmental positive impact;
Investment with return expectations:
there is an expectation of generating a financial return on capital or at least a return of capital;
Range of return expectations and asset classes:
the returns that are generated by impact investments can range from below market to risk-adjusted market rate;
Impact measurement:
the impact investors commit to measuring the social and/or environmental impact generated by their investments – this measurement ensuring the transparency and accountability of the process and helping to develop the field.

While various concepts of classification of impact investors exist, a common thread in their activities is their desire to see a positive correlation between and activities social impact and its ability to generate financial return.