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Constantin Sorlescu, INREV, John Ravoisin, PwC, Nick Brown, M&G Real Estate, Robert White, EY and John Forbes, John Forbes Consulting, discussed the recently launched Open End Fund Pricing consultation paper, including a highly relevant section in today’s uncertain times related to pricing policy during exceptional market circumstances.

SWELL is a new flagship property to be delivered in 2020 with quadruple certification: WELL “Silver”, BREEAM “Very Good,” HQE “Excellent” and Effinergie. The energy efficient 201,285 square foot project, initiated in 2018, includes 27,000 square feet of biophilic garden terraces with outstanding views of the Seine River.

Henri Vuong, INREV presents the impacts on fund performance from the start of the pandemic using the INREV indices. Andreas Wuermeling, Deutsche Pfandbriefbank, joined us online in the studio to present the possibilities in loan restructuring during these uncertain times, and Simon Mallinson, Real Capital Analytics presents today’s investment deals landscape in light of COVID-19. The panel of speakers come together at the end to collectively discuss the overall market impact.

A lack of affordable housing is a global issue and not one exclusively seen in developing markets, with acute issues also common in property hotspots in Western Europe and North America. Whilst there is no single definition of affordable housing, generally the term captures a wide spectrum of housing options, varying from social rent, to intermediate rent, to first-time buyer schemes aimed at getting people on the property ladder.

Prepared by BMO Global Asset Management

The INREV Annual Report 2019 will take you through the key highlights and achievements of 2019. View an interactive version of the report or download PDF below. 

The AXA Impact Fund - Climate and Biodiversity, launched in July 2019, was developed in response to increasing concerns about how climate change threatens biodiversity.

INREV Annual General Meeting 2020 was held online on 3 June. It provided all members with the opportunity to learn about our achievements, financial statements and membership growth in 2019. We also presented proposed re-appointments to the INREV Management Board and let you know what’s in store for 2020.

This year’s survey includes 140 managers and represents total real estate assets under management of €3.2 trillion as at end 2019.

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a powerful organizational and communications tool for institutional investors and asset managers as they are universally accepted across multiple facets of society. But the SDGs are vulnerable to misuse, misrepresentation and dilution. Investors need to ensure that when a product is labelled as “aligned with the SDGs” that it moves beyond just alignment and makes a real contribution to positive social and environmental outcomes. In this article we explain how we have approached this challenge with an investment in affordable housing, one of the main sectors within social infrastructure.

Prepared by Franklin Templeton

As impact performance becomes a powerful differentiator and a meaningful new dimension of overall performance for all types of investing, understanding the current trends in the impact investing market becomes crucial to take part in this new type of race within the investment marketplace. 

With its latest Impact Measurement and Management (IMM) Survey  published in January 2020, the GIIN  provides a comprehensive overview of the current impact investing market .

The report take a look into how investors describe their objectives, motivations and strategies for understanding and improving their impact, and the processes for holding themselves and their investees accountable, along with the other elements of their IMM practices. 

Findings of the report reflect the growing sophistication and maturation of IMM, the integration of IMM into investment processes and the rising focus on impact results. 

Key Findings

1. While impact investors pursue diverse impact objectives, they universally agree on the importance of measuring and managing impact results. 

• The most commonly targeted impact themes or sectors include employment (71%), agriculture (63%), and financial services (62%).

2. Across the market, IMM practices have grown increasingly sophisticated as investors shift from building consensus for IMM to strengthening its integration within investment processes. 

• IMM responsibilities are allocated to investment teams (68%), to staff dedicated to IMM (50%), and to senior leadership (39%). 
• IMM is integrated into the investment process itself. Impact data is considered across each stage; most commonly during due diligence (81%), investment screening (77%), and identifying the social or environmental needs to address through investment (75%).

3. As the market grows and matures, impact investors increasingly demand insight into impact performance. 

• Key challenges of impact investing are cited as follows; a lack of transparency on impact performance (89%), the inability to compare impact results with market performance (84%), collecting quality data (92%), aggregating, analysing, or interpreting data (74%),
• Investors demanding resources; impact benchmarks (92%), pooled impact data (86%), case studies on best practices (86%), tools to strengthen impact screening (83%).

4. Impact measurement and management incurs some costs, but it also generates financial benefits.

• On average, impact investors spend an estimated 12% of their organisation’s total budget on IMM-related activities,
• Respondents use impact data directly related to an organisations’ financial strength, such as communicating results to stakeholders (89%) and assessing risk factors (45%), to strengthening IMM processes and improving impact results by identifying or refining metrics (69%), setting or revising impact goals (65%), and strengthening data-collection processes (62%). 

Summarised by Bahar Yay Celik, Analyst at INREV’s Professional Standards Team