The Surprising Leader In The Impact Investing Boom: Debt

Impact investing was once the domain of nuns and other faith-based investors, who wanted their portfolios to reflect their values. Then billionaire capitalists started to build a range of impact products and propelling the impact investing market to over $500 billion. As impact investing has grown over the past decade, impact loan agreements have become increasingly focused on protecting and enhancing impact performance. At a minimum, this has meant including reporting covenants focused on borrower impact performance. Many impact investors go further by modifying common contractual provisions to embed impact considerations. Some impact lenders include covenants that limit borrower expenditures that are excessive or inconsistent with impact goals. Meanwhile, other impact lenders are using "do no harm" covenants to mitigate the heightened reputational risk.