investing with impact.

Lombard Odier has always taken its responsibility to make a positive contribution to society and the environment seriously. For over two decades we have spearheaded the practice of impact investing, which is designed to intentionally create outcomes that change the world for the better without compromising on the potential to generate returns.

For us, measuring, reporting and verifying (MRV) impact is of paramount importance, and we are constantly innovating to improve our MRV capabilities, including recently through an academic partnership with the University of Oxford focused on climate change, circular economy and nature.

We do this by focusing on impact investments that provide access to basic needs - such as banking, education, energy, employment and sustainable agriculture - to the poorest people in emerging and frontier markets. The social impact in these cases is an important and central driver of the investment process.

Our objective is to maximise both the social impact and the financial returns, demonstrating that there is no trade-off between these two dimensions. We measure and report on our results on a yearly basis, with a clear objective to improve our impact year after year.

Here are some of the many projects we have worked with that aim to make a positive impact on our society.

Bringing investment to education

In India, Varthana brings direct investment financing to education, helping private schools with loans so that they can expand their infrastructure, help with training teachers and bring on new ways of learning for students. So far, some 2.5 million children across the whole country have been impacted as a result of the financing and over 3,500 schools have benefitted from the loans.

Bring cheaper energy to all

The mission behind the Greenlight Planet Group is to expand the access across low-income homes to quality energy. This is achieved by providing affordable solar devices. In total, almost 10 million homes which were off the electricity grid have now been reached and helped with energy access. There are some 49 million daily users of the devices, which in many cases means that sunset no longer has to mean bedtime.

Keeping smallholders in business

Since it was established as a fund in 2001, Incofin has been managing and investing in emerging countries. Amongst the areas it focuses on is sustainable agriculture and it has set itself the goal of bringing fairness to all in the sector by helping smallholder farmers with their financial and technical assistance. It focuses on the promotion of illicit crop substitution and organic and sustainable agriculture. In addition, it also contributes to peace-building initiatives in some of the regions it operates in. So far, 252,000 farmers and collectors have been helped.