Capital in action, impact in motion.

This is the theme of this year's Impact Summit, organised by the Sustainable Finance Initiative in Hong Kong. Through a series of keynotes, debates, and thematic salons, the Summit this year explored approaches to move beyond ideas and intentions into real strategies, structures and collaborations.

CIIP's Chii Fen Hiu spoke at the salon on "Unlocking Markets Through Collective Catalytic Capital", together with Caleb Ballou of Trimtab Impact, Marie Ekeland of 2050, and Pearline Yum-Arthur of The ImPact. The panel spoke about how there are misalignments with existing investment models towards generating impact, where there is an inherent tension between the intention to support promising pipeline, versus the overarching funding mandate that investors have to adhere to. There is also tactical friction within funders themselves, where the different teams have varying perspectives on timelines and impact objectives. This is something that parties developing new products would need to navigate and negotiate, to ensure that intent can translate into action.

The concerns and challenges faced by funders is elaborated in CIIP's latest report on Climate Adaptation and Resilience - from a survey completed by 165 Asian funders across the spectrum of capital, we found that scalability and long-term sustainability rank among the top priorities, reflecting a shared commitment to self-sustaining solutions that increase reach and impact. However, while private equity (PE), venture capital (VC) and family offices (FO) expect the highest returns, FOs prioritise both outcomes and returns, which suggest potential to bridge commercial and development finance objectives.

We thank SFi for the kind invite, and for the well-curated programme!