Responsible investment
Impact investment
Building on our heritage of responsible investment, in March 2018, we launched PG LIFE, a dedicated impact-at-scale investment strategy focused on investments that contribute towards achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The blended private markets strategy has the dual mandate to achieve attractive risk-adjusted financial returns alongside measurable, positive social and environmental impact.
Our methodology
Over the years, we have constantly strived to improve our approach to ESG integration and engagement. We have developed our impact-at-scale investment strategy to go one step further by investing in companies whose core products and services contribute to achieving the SDGs, and credibly assess, deliver and report our impact.
Specifically, we aim to bring scale to impact by using:
- our capital to make larger investments in larger enterprises for larger impacts, signaling that measurable impact matters;
- our governance rights to actively engage and imbue "mainstream" management teams with impact sensibilities and effective impact management; and
- our resources to improve the quality of impact due diligence, measurement, and reporting.
We use the Impact Management Project (IMP)'s five dimensions (What, Who, How Much, Contribution and Risk) to frame our impact goals. Specifically, we target SDGs that are a high priority in the countries or regions where a particular investment operates (What); we target the underserved in relation to those SDGs, whether it is people or the environment (Who); we aim to improve the lives of stakeholders in a lasting (enduring) and meaningful (deep) way – at scale (How Much); we signal that measurable impact matters and engage actively through business-building, active ownership and governance (Contribution); and we aim to invest in companies where the risk that positive impacts will not materialize is relatively low (Risk).
Operating Principles for Impact Management
In 2019, Partners Group became a first adopter of the Operating Principles for Impact Management. Partners Group played an active role in developing the Impact Principles, which provide a clear common market standard for what constitutes an impact investment, and has applied them to its impact-at-scale strategy.
Partners Group's annual Disclosure Statement is available below:
Operating Principles for Impact Management Disclosure Statement