The views expressed are those of the teams comprising Wellington’s Impact Platform including our impact equity and fixed income investment teams and IMM Practice. For these teams and strategies, impact measurement and management and engagement is a core component of the investment process. These practices do not necessarily extend to other strategies that Wellington Management offers. Views are those of the authors at the time of writing, and other teams may hold different views and make different investment decisions. The value of your investment may become worth more or less than at the time of original investment. While any third-party data used is considered reliable, its accuracy is not guaranteed. For professional, institutional, or accredited investors only.
Impact themes
Wellington's impact investment teams invest globally across three broad impact categories — Life essentials, Human empowerment, and Environment — which we then divide into 11 impact themes. While not explicitly linked to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), we believe the 11 themes we invest in closely align with the SDGs, and we map our portfolios’ desired impact outcomes to these goals and their underlying targets.
Impact opportunities can represent innovative solutions across sectors, asset classes, and market capitalizations. All impact investments must meet our thresholds for materiality, additionality, and measurability. That is, companies or issuers must generate most of their revenue from products and services related to at least one of our impact themes, the impact they generate must have a low prospect of being achieved by other means, and we must be able to track and measure their impact.
Once we determine whether a company or issuer meets our impact criteria, we add it to our opportunity set. Our fundamental analysis then seeks to identify those investments with the most attractive long-term return potential.
Affordable housing
Clean water & sanitation
Health
Sustainable agriculture & nutrition
Digital divide
Education & job training
Financial inclusion
Safety & security
Alternative energy
Resource efficiency
Resource stewardship
We believe access to safe, affordable housing enables people to focus less on basic survival and more on physical, emotional, and economic well-being. Without the daily anxiety of homelessness or unaffordable shelter, families can concentrate on education and career building, both of which can lead to long-term financial stability, better health outcomes, and upward social mobility.
For hundreds of millions of people globally, securing clean water is a constant, time-consuming struggle that can hinder economic development and perpetuate community-level inequities. When families, particularly women, have ready access to water, health and economic outcomes may improve. Water infrastructure, sanitation, and resource management are also critical for building climate resiliency.
Providing health care to underserved or vulnerable populations, researching novel treatments for complex diseases, and advancing diagnostic technologies are significant, often expensive challenges. But the personal and societal-level benefits of broader access to health care are far-reaching and long-lasting.
Solutions for sustainable food production, including resilient seeds, crops, and livestock, may help reduce food insecurity and enhance nutrition. Technologies geared toward smallholder farms may help mitigate the negative effects of large-scale industrial agriculture, including air, soil, and water pollution and natural-resource depletion.
Lack of internet access can hinder education, social inclusion, and economic empowerment, compounding structural inequalities. Individuals or businesses without reliable access may fall further behind in an increasingly digital-dependent economy. Narrowing the digital gap is particularly important for rural communities and developing countries.
Education can be a key that opens the door to economic stability. Solutions for improving in-person teaching and expanding remote-access education, especially for low-income populations, can have positive, community-level multiplier effects. Done affordably and in conjunction with other connectivity solutions, online learning and job training can help lift millions out of poverty.
Access to equitable financial services, credit, and other forms of capital is critical for individuals and small businesses. We believe companies that expand access to these services can enable financial stability and help sustain economic development.
As the world becomes increasingly reliant on connectivity and online transactions, cybersecurity — protecting data and privacy — is vital. Other forms of safety, including innovations for the home and workplace, or resilient infrastructure to protect life and property from natural disasters, can also have wide-ranging positive impact.
Decarbonizing the energy sector is, in our view, the biggest step along the path toward achieving net-zero carbon emissions. Renewable-energy companies play a pivotal role in the transition to a low-carbon future, enabling the world to gradually wean itself from fossil fuels, decelerate global temperature rise, and clear polluted air.
Rising consumption and a dwindling supply of finite resources including minerals, base metals, arable land, water, and timber present costly social and environmental challenges. Innovating and modernizing existing resource extraction, production, and distribution methods can help reduce waste, mitigate pollution, save money, and safeguard human health.
In our view, solutions that enhance resource stewardship and promote circular, sustainable economies are becoming more vital and valuable, as the harmful effects of linear, disposable economies become apparent. Self-sustaining, regenerative systems of production and consumption, where waste is minimized or avoided altogether, could become an economic necessity.
Impact reports
See impact highlights from each of our strategies, along with measurable impact results from the companies and issuers in which we invest.
