Impact Investment Exchange (IIX) is a global organisation dedicated to building a more inclusive world through innovative finance and support for high-impact enterprises

Impact Investment Exchange (IIX), an organisation that aims to provide an innovative approach to finance and enterprise-support for a more inclusive world, announced that it has received US$887,000 (S$1.2 million) from the Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT).

The company said that the fund will be used to develop the ecosystem for gender lens investing in Asia, as well as leveraging it to support the growth of 500 impact enterprises across Asia.

IIX’s program is called Equity@Scale, is funded under DFAT’s Frontier Brokers initiative—which focusses on addressing key weaknesses in the current entrepreneurial ecosystem and moving the capital to enterprises.

The program will also provide impact investing ecosystem players (including investors, foundations, banks, financial service providers, lawyers, corporate partners, and mentors) with the tools and resources to apply a gender-lens to their business approaches, processes, and strategies of engagement.

With the main mission of shifting gendered power dynamics in favor of women entrepreneurs and accelerating the growth of gender-lens investing, Equity@Scale will incentivise enterprises to integrate women throughout their value chain.

Gender lens investing refers to the use of finance to create gender equity by incorporating a gender analysis into investment decisions, with the intention to improve outcomes for women.

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“Gender lens investing is a powerful solution to shift deeply embedded dynamics from treating women as victims to valuing them as solution-builders. Through our partnership with DFAT, IIX is taking our work to the next level by enabling everyone to play a role in building inclusive markets,” said Durreen Shahnaz, CEO, and Founder of IIX.

Through Equity@Scale, IIX will support enterprises with three types of capital: human capital in the form of investment readiness training; social capital in the form of access to mentoring and corporate networks; and financial capital in the form of access to investors and private sector equity and debt investments.

IIX claimed that it has been known for its experience in building the impact investing market and driving women’s empowerment across the world.

Shahnaz continue to share that she started IIX with the vision to bring women and underserved communities to the forefront of financial markets.

“I witnessed first-hand how women-led and women-focussed businesses face challenges to growth at every turn and realised that to change this we need to move beyond fragmented solutions and create long-term pathways for change,” said Shahnaz

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Reports said that there are around 30-40 per cent gender wage gap in Asia, and closing this gender gap could generate a 30 per cent increase in the per capita income of the average Asian economy in one generation.

While impact enterprises play a critical role in addressing gender equality and sustainable development issues, they face barriers in accessing resources and capital to grow. This issue is compounded for women-owned businesses across the developing countries, with an estimated 70 per cent of the seven million women-owned SMEs in the formal sector unserved or underserved by financial institutions.

“For nearly a decade IIX has been building these pathways through supporting entrepreneurs with impact assessments, technical assistance, and our ACTS accelerator program; connecting them to investors through our Impact Partners crowdfunding platform; creating financial products such as the Women’s Livelihood Bond that unlock greater private capital and amplify public resources; and sharing our experiences and methodologies with ecosystem players,” Shahnaz added.

IIX’s Equity@Scale program will accelerate conscious investment into women’s empowerment by broadening mainstream definitions of gender lens investing to include those investments which go into companies and initiatives that benefit underserved women (defined as low-income, rural, and minority women) in emerging markets.

IIX’s Women’s Livelihood Bond (WLB1) claims to be the world’s first impact investment products listed on a stock exchange reporting social and financial returns.

IIX has partnered with USAID, DFAT, DBS Bank, Shearman & Sterling LLP, Latham & Watkins LLP, and Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas for the Women’s Livelihood Bond 2 (WLB2) that will open access to over US$100 million of private sector capital to impact one million women across Asia.
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