Sep 25th 2009 | NEW YORK From The Economist print edition

You might suppose that financial innovation had done enough damage. But bankers, investors and philanthropists believe it can help the world’s poor

MANY nodded when Lord Turner, the City of London’s chief regulator, said recently that the financial industry had grown “beyond its socially useful size”. The idea that devices such as collateralised debt obligations and credit-default swaps have been a blessing, not least by allowing the less well-off to buy houses, is in tatters: lots of those new homeowners have lost their houses as well as their jobs. It is remarkable, then, that the crisis should have given fresh impetus to “social finance”, a movement based on the belief that financial innovation can be used directly to help society’s neediest people.

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Impact Investment Exchange Asia (IIX) introduced its plans to create Asia’s first social stock exchange at SoCap09, the pioneering global conference for the social capital markets held September 1-3 in San Francisco.

More than 800 delegates representing all aspects of the emerging social capital markets attended the conference. They included social venture capitalists, foundations, investment advisors, social enterprises, community organizations and government agencies. Sonal Shah, who was appointed this year by US President Barack Obama as director of the newly created White House Office of Social Innovation, gave the keynote address.

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