Zurich Insurance earmarks 10% of PE allocation for impact funds

Zurich will partner with vehicles that aim to focus on social and environmental issues and that are willing to report on non-financial impact metrics. Some of the goals that the strategy is looking to achieve include the development of a low-carbon economy and environmentally friendly technologies, as well as addressing the needs of populations that lack traditional means to increase community resilience.

"With impact private equity we can do this already today, at least for one small part of our portfolio. Our hope is to help make this approach more mainstream over the coming years," Zurich said in a statement.

The insurer is already committed to two impact fund managers, Ambienta and LeapFrog Investments. The former, an environment-focused GP, held a final close for its second fund on €323.5m at the end of 2014, surpassing its target of €300m. LeapFrog focuses on emerging markets and raised $400m for its strategy in 2014.

Social impact investing has been gathering momentum in recent months, often driven by LPs' need to monitor their portfolio's social and environmental credentials. Earlier this year, unquote" explored this issue with an in-depth feature, which you can read here.

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• Topics
• Fundraising
• Ambienta
• Social Impact