Sustainable Fitch has provided its Second-Party Opinion on Impact Investment Exchange’s (IIX) Women’s Livelihood Bond™ (WLB) Series framework; we consider the framework to be fully aligned with the ICMA Green Bond Principles, Social Bond Principles and Sustainability Bond Guidelines. Sustainable Fitch’s opinion is that the alignment is ‘Excellent’.
Sustainable Fitch also consider the framework to be aligned with the Orange Bond Principles™ (OBP) developed by the Orange Movement™, driven by a steering committee, which comprises IIX; the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade; the US International Development Finance Corporation; water.org; ANZ Bank; and Nuveen, LLC. This is Sustainable Fitch’s first evaluation of a framework against the OBP.
IIX is an impact investment management company that provides equity and debt funding, as well as financial solutions. It is based in Singapore and has over 70 employees in Singapore, India, Vietnam and Indonesia, among others. IIX’s WLB Series has disbursed loans globally, with a particular focus on South Asia, Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Proceeds from bonds issued under this framework can be allocated to seven categories, including three green ones (water, sanitation and hygiene loans; clean energy solutions; and sustainable agriculture) and four social ones (SME lending and microfinance; micro-savings and micro-insurance products; affordable housing; and agriculture).
The social projects are targeted at under-served, low-income women in lower-middle- and upper-middle-income countries as classified by the World Bank.
Sustainable Fitch expect the projects to positively contribute to environmental and social outcomes, including employment generation, improved access to formal financial services for under-served women, increased renewable energy use in households, and cleaner water and improved sanitation facilities.
GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT SUSTAINABLE FITCH RATINGS AND OTHER PRODUCTS
Sustainable Fitch’s ESG Ratings offer a global solution to assess Environmental, Social and Governance performance of all asset classes at an entity, framework and instrument level, helping the ESG financial community make better, informed decisions. It has developed a modular analysis framework, enabling it to provide a Second-Party Opinion (SPO) and a monitored suite of ESG Ratings including Entity Rating, Framework Rating and Instrument Rating.