We are pleased to give our full support to the Asian Venture Philanthropy Network (AVPN), Impact Investment Workshop Series – Due Diligence, which was held on 26 July 2018 at Crowe (HK) CPA Limited, Hong Kong.  The workshop was well attended by about 30 participants.

Conducting due diligence is one of the most important yet also most resource consuming parts of impact investment. The goal of this process is to support the identification of high-quality opportunities, reduce risk, and create a diversified portfolio of impact investments.

The workshop focused on the key elements to consider in making direct investments which will be different to the due diligence to be done while investing in impact funds.  The due diligence process will look at the management team, the business model, the social mission, execution capacity and the exit strategy.  While many of these elements are subjective, having a framework and a standardized process is important to enable comparison between projects and facilitate the investment decision process.

This event was facilitated by Insitor Impact Asia Fund (“Insitor”), a social venture capital fund that provides equity and mezzanine funding to social enterprises in emerging and frontier markets.

Through the workshop, including presentations, case studies and discussions, participants were able to:

• Understand Insitor’s strategy and theory of change
• Examine one type of due diligence framework
• Glean key insights and advice on important elements to take into consideration in the due diligence process
• Review a case study and discuss potential risks and opportunities

HKMMCCI President Dr Lin introduced the Chamber to workshop participants.