Swiss Investment Firm Opens New Office In Singapore

Robbie Lawther

7 June 2018

Switzerland-based impact investment manager has opened a new office in Singapore, highlighting the continued interest in this way of managing money.

BlueOrchard has been present in the region for almost 10 years and manages two funds, the Microfinance Initiative for Asia (MIFA) and the Japan ASEAN Women Empowerment Fund (JAWEF), it said in a statement.

The new office in Singapore will complement the office in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. It will enable BlueOrchard to further expand its reach to clients and investments across Asia-Pacific.

BlueOrchard has deployed more than $5 billion across 80 emerging and frontier markets, enabling beneficial social and environmental impact. BlueOrchard’s funds proactively address 13 of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals.

“We are seeing high demand in the Asia Pacific region for impact investing expertise. Singapore, as a local hub, plays an important part in BlueOrchard’s continued growth in the region,” said Patrick Scheurle, chief executive of BlueOrchard.

The firm also has offices in Switzerland (Zurich and Geneva), Luxembourg, Kenya, Peru, Cambodia and Georgia.

The term “impact investing” relates to the model of putting money to work to achieve financial returns while also hitting targets such as cleaning up the environment, cutting criminal re-offending rates and reducing illiteracy. The field has grown rapidly, generating considerable interest in the wealth management industry. The sector is not without some controversy – there has been concern that fashion-conscious asset managers might flood the sector with money, leading to “mission drift” and corrupt the meaning of the original concept.

Another potential challenge is that the concept hasn’t yet been challenged by a global or regional recession, although proponents claim impact investing actually diversifies portfolios and reduces certain risks, making it a sensible way to handle investments anyway.

Impact investing is gaining momentum. A global study of 229 impact investors around the world, together holding more than $228 billion of assets, shows that over half of them jumped into the market for the first time last year, suggesting the rapid increase in interest, and plan to hike investment by 8 per cent in 2018. The figures come in the Global Impact Investing Network, aka GIIN, which has published the eighth edition of its Annual Impact Investor Survey. For the first time, its results were issued in Asia, and the organisation partnered with Credit Suisse to examine trends in the region.