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Wednesday, January 16, 2019, 14:53
Making impact investment measurable
By Pamela Lin
Wednesday, January 16, 2019, 14:53 By Pamela Lin

HONG KONG — As impact investing is gaining attention worldwide both for social and financial outcomes, experts believe it is fundamentally important to measure that ‘impact’ for win-win results.

Pindar Wong

“If we don't have impact investing which encourages sustainable industries, then we won’t have very much left. And I think China has a great opportunity to lead,” Pindar Wong, chairman of VeriFi (Hong Kong) Limited, told China Daily after a roundtable forum in Hong Kong on the sidelines of the 2019 Asian Financial Forum. The roundtable held on Jan 15, titled "Unleashing Impact Investing in Asia," was organized by China Daily.

ALSO READ: Impact investing – 'bridging the disparity' is critical

According to Wong, impact investing’s problem is its lack of any real way to measure social impact. “When you're talking about an individual return, the reason why we only look at that right now is because we have no way of measuring the external return, the benefit to society,” Wong said.

If we don't have impact investing which encourages sustainable industries, then we won’t have very much left. And I think China has a great opportunity to lead

Pindar Wong, Chairman, VeriFi (Hong Kong) Limited

He believes there are positives in crYptocurrency that could help, and he made the point that ideas in the digital world need not be held back by a zero-sum mentality. “We can actually both win together,” Wong said.

“So blockchain is the technology that provides transparency. People don't have to trust someone, they can just trust math to create a win-win situation,” he added.

Wong is also the chief architect of Belt and Road Blockchain Consortium, a platform to bring provable sustainability into fully digital manufacturing, trade and retail among the 65 Belt and Road economies. In July 2016, at the Blockchain Strategies for Business conference in Hong Kong, Wong issued an open call for participation to facilitate that digitalization of trade.

ALSO READ: Making an 'impact' on Asia

In digitalization and blockchain, Wong sees real promise for providing solutions for social investment impact. “If we can measure it with math, then we can apply science. And once we can apply science, we can then really begin to fix many of the problems that have been established by previous generations,” he said. 

pamelalin@chinadailyhk.com

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