Innovest Advisory will be joining this years Business Fights Poverty conference in Oxford.

Innovest’s Managing Director, Justin Sykes will moderate a panel on promoting inclusive business models for #Refugees.

The panel which includes representatives from Ben & Jerry’s, the Soros Economic Development Fund and the Oxford Refugees Studies Centre, will discuss contributions business can make to tackle the global refugee crisis including hiring refugees, integrating them into supply chains and investing in new refugee inclusive job creation programmes.

Business Fights Poverty brings together an audience from across business, civil society, academia and government to rethink collaboration for social impact.

Join us and the 300+ innovators and thinkers on the 18th of July, 2018, and get inspired.

Innovest Advisory will speak this month to an audience of civil servants, business leaders and third sector specialists on its work with Social Enterprises internationally and within the Channel Islands.

Justin Sykes , Innovest’s Managing Director will discuss our support to Social Enterprises including business start-up, investment readiness and support to growth. The presentation will also discuss what is required in order to create a conducive ecosystem for social entrepreneurship including access finance, training and capacity building, network development and awareness raising and enabling legislation.

The presentation will also feature a case study by one of Innovest’s Guernsey based partners Soil.gg, a regenerative soil health and land management social enterprise.

ESAFON is hosting its 3rd Annual Global Impact Investment Conference with its key objective to educate and provide investors and stakeholders with the most relevant information and resources from skilled worldwide impact practitioners to overcome the obstacles in impact management and measurement including due diligence, ongoing monitoring and reporting.

Our council Michelle McMahon will be presenting, and representing Innovest Advisory at this conference.

Impact investing is a global trend driven by investors and asset owners, entrepreneurs, NGO’s, Governments and Corporates who seek a positive social and environmental impact in their investments.

There is, therefore, a global growth of sustainable assets driven by global challenges affecting our planet and investors preference that factor social and environmental impact into their investing decisions. The main objective of ESAFON is to drive the impact agenda forward to help build-up a true understanding of impact in investing and adopt positive impact as part of mainstream instruments within the capital markets and investment strategies.

The conference will provide useful tools and takeaways to construct impact and alpha under the same model and across portfolios and asset classes from both investors and manager’s perspective. Overhauling Modern Portfolio Theory through a 100% impact investing approach will be shared with the audience and lessons learnt and obstacles occurred will be fully discussed. Family offices, foundations, institutional investors and managers have different motivations, challenges and constraints that will be pragmatically addressed, detailed and debated over panel sessions.

Date: Friday 18th May 2018
Time: 9am to 5pm. Registration starts at 8.30am
The Venue: St Pierre Park Hotel, St Peter Port, Guernsey

Guernsey residents Nyasha Gwatidzo and Korinne Le Page have joined forces to launch Guernsey’s first conference focused on social entrepreneurship. The conference will highlight the roles that businesses can play in using market based solutions to overcome social challenges in our community.

Great examples of this in Guernsey are Go Guernsey which runs as number of retail outlets that focus on job training and employment for youth and special needs and the Caritas Cafe which provides employment as well as a place to meet to those suffering from mental illness, loneliness and other societal challenges.

Justin Sykes, our Managing Director will be representing Innovest Advisory, defining and giving examples of social impact projects internationally and locally, and explaining the different funding mechanisms for them and how social enterprises can become impact investment ready.

We are delighted to participate in this conference and help build awareness of social entrepreneurship on island, as well as provide practical advice to social enterprises or aspiring social enterprises on how to structure for success and to raise funding.

“What can the financial sector do to improve the wellbeing of current and Future Generations?​”

#FutureGenerations is day-long conference on the Environment and Sustainability held this Saturday 17 March at St James.

This Youth-led event [organised by Adam Sparkes, Tom Rylatt, Pieter Durman and Cameron Ashplant] is will engage the States of Guernsey, industry leaders, economists and environmentalists to explore how Guernsey can become a global leader in environmental sustainability.

Sanne Schouwenburg will represent Innovest Advisory at this event, speaking on a panel which will address potential contribution of the Finance sector in Guernsey to this objective.

Sanne will present on Innovest Advisory work with both impact investors and social enterprises in using market-based approaches to tackle key environmental and sustainability challenges such as climate change, sustainable food production and renewable energy production in Guernsey and abroad.

Our CEO, Justin Sykes, Tala Fakhro (Executive Director EDB) and @ecubeisy (partner Silicon Badia) discuss financial inclusion with Dr Michael Jordaan @MEAfintech.

Innovest’s Michelle McMahon has been invited by the UNDP to participate in its Stakeholder Consultation on ‘Expanding Economic Opportunities for Refugees and Host Communities in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey’ on 5-6 March 2018, in Istanbul. Innovest’s partner First Syrian Exporters Group will join the consultation to discuss it’s efforts, working with refugees, in the ready-made garments industry in South-East Turkey.

The First Syrian Exporters Group (FSEG) is a consortium of ten Syrian owned and operated businesses based in the Turkish city of Kahramanmaras. These businesses were originally from Aleppo, Syria, but due to conflict they were forced to relocate to Turkey in 2011 and are now operating as formally registered Turkish businesses. Kahramanmaras is a historic centre for Turkish textiles, and the FSEG consortium has reestablished operations in the fabric production, knitwear and ready-made garments sectors.

FSEG has an annual production capacity of around 6 million items of clothing and generates approximately €20 million euros in exports, targeting markets in the EU, North America and the Arabian Gulf. Starting with a handful of employees in 2011, the FSEG now employs more than 500 staff of which over 70% are Syrian refugees.

Building on its successes, FSEG is seeking to expand its production capacity. This will help create jobs for Syrian refugees, and have a significant impact on the local Turkish economy – the cotton production and transportation sectors – through increased demand.

In addition, FSEG intends to pilot an innovative employee profit share model – Fair Share – which aims to empower disadvantaged Syrian refugees by giving them a profit share from the sales of particular clothing they make.

FSEG has identified opportunities to partner with multinational apparel companies with existing supply chains in Turkey that are willing to become ‘refugee inclusive’.

The Islamic Finance Council UK (UKIFC) and the International Shari’ah Research Academy for Islamic Finance (ISRA) is providing a unique workshop to shine a light on key issues and challenges facing the Islamic finance sector.

Today’s workshop will explore the relationship between Islamic and ethical finance; a topic very relevant to both of our organisations. The UKIFC is a global leader in advancing the debate around the role Islamic finance plays within the ethical finance thematic. For over eight years the UKIFC has designed and built out award-winning innovative initiatives across mainstream ethical finance. Through our unique international partnership ISRA and the UKIFC have, over the last six years, collaborated on a number of thought leadership reports, executive education courses and industry events intended to drive the sector forward.

Our CEO, Justin Sykes will be present at this event to speak about the role fintech platforms can play to address poverty in Muslim populations.

Just over 12 months ago Innovest Advisory and PwC invited social investors, business leaders and government officials to come together for an inspiring evententitled Finance for Good. We had the pleasure of welcoming the founder of Acumen, Jacqueline Novogratz to the Channel Islands. As the keynote speaker Jacqueline shared her inspirational stories on the role patient capital can play solving some of the world’s most pressing development challenges like access to clean water, quality education and low cost household energy .

What is patient capital?

This is a term coined by Jacqueline and put into practice by Acumen. Patient capital recognises that markets alone cannot solve the problems of poverty; nor are charity and aid enough. Two-thirds of the world’s population still lives in poverty, and we need new approaches in order to find new solutions. We also need to recognize how challenging it is to build large-scale, lasting solutions in some of the toughest environments in the world.

Patient capital investing bridges the gap between the efficiency and scale of market-based approaches and the social impact of pure philanthropy. Patient capital has a high tolerance for risk, has long time horizons, is flexible to meet the needs of entrepreneurs, and is unwilling to sacrifice the needs of end customers for the sake of shareholders. At the same time, patient capital ultimately demands accountability in the form of a return of capital: proof that the underlying enterprise can grow sustainably in the long run.

Jacqueline explained that it starts by standing with the poor and recognising potential where others see despair. It demands investing as a means not an end, and daring to go where markets have failed and aid has fallen short. Principally, by catalysing entrepreneurship we can create a world without poverty.

Since its launch in 2001 Acumen has invested $110 million into 102 social enterprises in 13 countries in 6 key development sectors (agriculture, education, energy, health, housing and water & sanitation) positively impacting more than 230 million lives. Jacqueline has inspired 385 ‘fellows’ to co-invest with her to achieve this vision.

Out of this Innovest Advisory and PwC hosted an event with a number of individuals in the Channels Islands committed to join Acumen as fellows.

This event provided an excellent platform to showcase the power of impact investing and that Innovest Advisory is committed to stimulating dialogue and sharing expertise through convening future conversations.

“Do what is right not what is easy.​”

– Jacqueline Novogratz

Solutions at Scale: How social finance is being used to tackle the refugee crisis

Saïd Business School University of Oxford

Join us for a provocative and insightful Social Impact webinar to discuss the challenges of human migration and creative ways Impact Investing and Social Finance are being used to help enable refugees to safely enter the workforce and expand economic opportunities in their new countries.

Oxford Social finance and Impact Investing Programme Director, Gayle Peterson will facilitate this session, and Innovest’s Managing Director Justin Sykes will join to discuss how development know-how can unlock private capital to tackle global challenges including initiatives designed to create durable livelihoods for vulnerable populations – including refugees.