The private impact investing market in Europe has shown growth, with investments in unlisted assets reaching the record amount of €190 billion. This is chief among the findings by the European Impact Investing Consortium in their report, The Size of Impact, released todayat Impact Europe’s Impact Week, gathering 1,000 impact actors in Bilbao to accelerate positive change for people and planet.
The European private impact investing market — comprising both direct and indirect investments in unlisted assets — is estimated at €190 billion, 2.5% of the €7.6 trillion, which is the total assets under management the Consortium considers eligible for impact investing in Europe. The report found a promising growth of total direct investments in unlisted assets under management, +20% between 2022 and 2023.
Roberta Bosurgi, Impact Europe CEO, commented on the report’s release: “Notable growth in the market reflects the increase in private market impact investors, and the increased coverage of this is due directly to the collaboration of the Consortium members. More needs to be done to solve social and environmental challenges, however, and it can only be done with institutional and catalytic capital (public and philanthropic) going hand in hand.”
The growth observed shows that impact investing is increasingly considered as a tool to develop new solutions that operate at scale. The report also notes an increase in investor additionality – a positive contribution that would not have happened without the investment itself – with 62% of the capital captured in unlisted assets having some element of investor additionality.
The Consortium calls on impact investors to embrace their new role as market influencers; on mainstream, responsible and sustainableinvestors to integrate impact investing into their ESG strategies; and on policymakersto build on the current evidence to scale the impact investing market.
Additional findings in The Size of Impact include: the size of the public impact investing market (€40 billion); comparisons across European countries (leaders: the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and France); dominant categories of private and direct impact investing (VC/PE, 44.8%of the investors included in this study); biggest sources of funding (institutional investors, 28% of the total capital made available to impact investors); 45% of capital flows outside of Europe; social and environmental goals continue to be among the top three targeted SDGs; 88% of organisations surveyed report clear evidence of managing impact, though impact measurement and management strategies remain fragmented.
The report is available here https://www.impacteurope.net/insights/size-impact
About the European Impact Investing Consortium
The European Impact Investing Consortium is comprised of Impact Europe, GSG France for Impact Finance, Impact Finance Belgium, Impact Investing Institute, MAZE, Netherlands Advisory Board on Impact Investing, Social Impact Agenda per l’Italia, SpainNAB, and The Hellenic Impact Investing Network; and for this data harmonisation effort it has been supported by EYDK – GSG Impact National Partner Türkiye, the national academic partners Esade Center for Social Impact and Politecnico di Milano – Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering, by GSG Impact and Invest for Impact Denmark. Under the impulse of Impact Europe’s data harmonisation effort, the Consortium’s mission is to harmonise and size Europe’s impact investing market, aiming to clarify its dynamics, trends and practices.
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