{"id":9375,"date":"2026-04-27T21:53:46","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T21:53:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staging.openvaluefoundation.org\/?p=9375"},"modified":"2026-04-27T21:53:47","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T21:53:47","slug":"blog-post-85","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/2026\/04\/27\/blog-post-85\/","title":{"rendered":"Blog post 85"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to the Global Impact Investing Network (Annual Impact Investor Survey, 2020<\/a>), the global impact investment market is worth US$715 billion. Based on the assets under management of the investors surveyed and excluding outliers<\/em>, Latin America is the third-largest investment destination (12%), after the United States\/Canada (30%) and Western Europe (15%), as well as one of the three fastest-growing regions (21% on average for the period 2015\u20132019, i.e. 4% above the global average).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the acceleration of the political, economic and social instability that the region has been going through since 2019 (resulting from events such as the social outbreak with its epicentre in Chile, the resignation and claim of a coup d'\u00e9tat by Evo Morales in Bolivia, the new standard<\/em> in Argentina and the already 5 million Venezuelan migrants and refugees), now amplified by the pandemic, the case for impact investment becomes even stronger. Not only is international capital flowing (with investors such as Blue Like an Orange<\/a> (having recently closed a fund of US$200 million focused exclusively on Latin America) and development funds (the Andean Development Corporation has just issued its first Social Bond worth \u20ac700 million to mitigate the effects of COVID), but also local investors, such as traditional funds, Family offices<\/em> And corporate funds and foundations are joining the ranks of the \u2018Impact Revolution\u2019. 

As an example, last week, Acumen LatAm Impact Ventures<\/a> It closed its first fund, with LPs including Bancoldex, Mercantil Colpatria, the Bancolombia Foundation, the Sura Foundation and the WWB Colombia Foundation. The US$28 million fund will seek to invest in early-stage companies aiming to address the challenges faced by those at the base of the pyramid in sectors such as agriculture, education, access to employment and clean energy. Meanwhile, upon announcing the closing of its second impact fund worth US$30.3 million, Adobe Capital<\/a> highlighted the greater participation of Mexican investors compared to the first fund. The mobilisation of local private capital towards impact is increasing and the \u201cwhy\u201d is no longer questioned, but rather the \u201chow\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This \u201cbreeding ground\u201d is marked by innovation. The development of impact investing in Latin America has been driven by technology and the venture capital boom being observed in the region. According to the latest LAVCA Annual Technology Investment Report<\/a> (Association for Private Equity Investment in Latin America), VC investment has doubled year on year since 2016, reaching US$$4.6 billion by the end of 2019. In terms of the number of Offers<\/em>, sectors such as \u2018Fintech\u2019 and \u2018Biotech\/Healthtech\u2019 lead the way, while \u2018Edtech\u2019 appears in sixth place. \u2018Fintech\u2019 also leads in terms of amount invested. In terms of notable transactions, \u2018Foodtech\u2019 appears as another of the industries Hot<\/em>. In this regard, and beyond microfinance and agriculture continuing to be the most significant sectors in Latin America (ANDE 2020), the intersection between impact and technology positions financial inclusion, education, and health verticals as key in the region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This trend towards innovation is not exclusively about technology. In line with the need for new financial mechanisms to leverage public and philanthropic capital in solving the most complex social challenges, Latin America is promoting the use of payment-by-results instruments. In 2017, Colombia launched \u201cUsing the Future<\/a>\u201dthe first Social Impact Bond (SIB) not only in the region but in a developing country, with the aim of employing vulnerable people. According to the Latin American Network for Payment by Results<\/a> (whose foundation in 2019 was a milestone in itself), in the last year, Colombia finalised the execution of this programme and launched a second under the same vertical (\u201cCalifornia Progresses with Employment<\/a>\u201d), whilst Argentina continued with the execution of its first CIS (\u201cPlan Your Future<\/a>\u201d), launched in December 2018, which aims to employ vulnerable young people from the City of Buenos Aires. 

For its part, Chile began to implement the programme \u201cFirst Read<\/a>\u201dWith the aim of improving the reading comprehension of vulnerable children, both Mexico and Brazil initiated structuring processes for three new CIS. Mexico in employment, and Brazil in health and education. Finally, a few weeks ago, Colombia once again took the lead by launching the region's first Results-Based Payment Fund within the framework of its CIS programme, and as a result of the joint work between BID Lab, the Swiss Embassy in Colombia \u2013 State Secretariat for Economic Affairs and Development (SECO), and Fundaci\u00f3n Corona and Prosperidad Social.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beyond the fact that, when analysing the development level of the impact market, there are, broadly speaking, two groups of countries (Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, versus the rest, although with countries like Argentina and Chile climbing positions), the main challenges are shared. Investors usually highlight: (i) the difficulty in finding opportunities Investment-ready<\/em>, (ii) the lack of funding instruments and structures tailored to the reality of impact investment in the region (such as, for example, instruments Revenue-based financing<\/em> that mitigate liquidity risk given the limited number of investments with a clear exit strategy, or patient capital instruments that allow this type of capital to be mobilised at scale), and (iii) the financing gap experienced by early-stage entrepreneurs (which feeds back into the first point as it is the investment early-stage<\/em>, which is usually accompanied by non-financial support, which ensures that there is a Pipeline<\/em> of quality in the following stages). 

Finally, Latin America is the latest ANDE report on Impact Investment in Latin America<\/a>, although the 80% survey of investors shows that half of them continue to use their own tools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite these challenges and the fact that Latin America is facing one of its most serious political, economic and social crises in recent decades, 41% of those surveyed by the GIIN plan to increase their asset allocation to the region over the next five years. Everything would seem to indicate that Latin America will continue to be one of the world\u2019s leading impact investment markets and will serve as a key testing ground to demonstrate that it is possible to generate financial returns alongside measurable impact in emerging economies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Pilar Cristobal<\/strong> is a collaborator of SpainNAB<\/strong><\/a>, the National Advisory Board for Impact Investment, the consultative, independent and cross-sectoral body, representing Spain before the GSG<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Seg\u00fan el Global Impact Investing Network (Annual Impact Investor Survey, 2020), el mercado global de inversi\u00f3n de impacto asciende a US$715 mil millones. Basado en los activos bajo administraci\u00f3n de los inversores encuestados y excluyendo outliers, Latinoam\u00e9rica representa el tercer destino de inversi\u00f3n (12%), despu\u00e9s de Estados Unidos\/Canad\u00e1 (30%) y Europa Occidental (15%), as\u00ed como una […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-post"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9375"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9375\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9377,"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9375\/revisions\/9377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}