Credit: Impact Investment Exchange (IIX)
– Rural women across Asia play a key role producing, processing, and trading agricultural products, and are often the primary users and managers of natural resources.
Despite this, discriminatory practices and stereotypes all too often limit their access to the technologies, information and economic opportunities needed to build resilience against environmental shocks and increase their incomes.
Orange Bond is a new concept in Việt Nam. Việt Nam News reporter Mai Hương talks to Kathy-Thủy Nguyễn, Impact Investment Exchange (IIX) Country Director in Việt Nam, about this type of impact investment and how it can contribute to sustainable financing development.
Don’t ask permission, ask forgiveness. That adage captured the mood shift among gender lens investors at this week’s SOCAP23 in San Francisco. Investors from the US and Colombia to Ghana and Singapore are done with being asked to provide proof that investments in women outperform or are “just better business.” That case has been made, they argue.
What they’re doing instead: Disrupting boys clubs that give men access to deals. Building the financial acumen of women. And getting on with the business of pooling and investing capital… in women.
Impact Investment Exchange (IIX), a pioneering global leader in the impact investing landscape, and the New York Institute of Finance (NYIF), a renowned institution with a century-long legacy of developing finance professionals under the guidance of leading experts, proudly announce their transformative partnership. This alliance is poised to reshape the future of the financial sector, particularly in emerging markets, while simultaneously advancing global education in impact investing. This collaboration promises to make significant waves in the realms of finance and sustainability.
With IIX’s formidable presence across Asia, the Pacific, and Africa, combined with NYIF’s distinguished reputation in the United States and worldwide, these two esteemed institutions have united forces to leverage their unique strengths. Together, they aim to create a platform that transcends geographical boundaries, thereby democratizing access to impact investing education on a global scale.
[Singapore/New York], [September 26, 2023] – Impact Investment Exchange (IIX), a pioneering global leader in the impact investing landscape, and the New York Institute of Finance (NYIF), a renowned institution with a century-long legacy of developing finance professionals under the guidance of leading experts, proudly announce their transformative partnership. This alliance is poised to reshape the future of the financial sector, particularly in emerging markets, while simultaneously advancing global education in impact investing. This collaboration promises to make significant waves in the realms of finance and sustainability.
Kathy-Thuy Nguyen, country director of Impact Investment Exchange (IIX) in Vietnam. Photo: IIXVietnam has called on investors to accelerate impact and innovation investment in order to help it meet its future development demands, according to Vu Quoc Huy, director of the Vietnam National Innovation Center under the Ministry of Planning and Investment.
Businesses must increasingly prioritise their ESG goals. This article explores recent regulatory and policy updates in relation to sustainable finance, notable developments in sustainability-linked loans and ASIC’s enforcement action against greenwashing.
Since Adelaide Airport signed the first Australian sustainability-linked loan (SLL) in 2018, interest in SLLs has steadily risen in the Australian and broader Asia-Pacific region. Borrowers and lenders have used SLLs as a way to align financing terms with their environmental, social and governance (ESG) strategies. However, in the past year, the volume of sustainable debts issued globally, including SLLs, declined for the first time by 19% from the peak of US$1.1 trillion in 2021. Similar trends have been seen in the Asia-Pacific region.
A Moody’s report shows increasing numbers of issuers are using sustainable bonds to support gender-equality goals.
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Orange sight. February witnessed the first-ever sustainable bond backed by the Orange Bond Principles. (Photo by Aleksandr Khmeliov via Shutterstock)
There is still very little about gender equality that makes for happy reading.
Sustainable bond issuance globally has surpassed US$3 trillion, yet less than 1 percent of that amount is dedicated to bonds that empower women and girls as a priority objective.
With gender lens investing gaining traction as part of overall sustainable bond issuance, the Orange Bond Principles are seeking to catalyse investment in gender-led bond issuance in a similar pathway to initiatives that have driven green and sustainability-linked bond demand.
Empowering women is imperative to the global community and economy if we want to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) by 2030. Time and time again, it has been proven that investing in women and empowering women-focused enterprises is the key to achieving sustainable development. Although organizations and companies in both the private and public sectors as well as governments are taking active steps to improve the financial inclusion of women, we are very far from the finish line. Women continue to be the majority of unbanked adults (56%), women also continue to earn less on average than men even in developed countries and women-led enterprises receive less funding than those led by their male counterparts. The global COVID-19 pandemic has furthered this gap and affected women, especially those from developing countries in a disproportionate manner.