Simon Bond, Director of Responsible Investment at Columbia Threadneedle: Doing The Right Thing - Bringing Mainstream Into Social Investment

Simon Bond is the Director of Responsible Investment Portfolio Management at Columbia Threadneedle Investments and has over 30 years of experience in fund management. He led the launch of the UK Social Bond Fund in partnership with Big Issue Invest in January 2014. They currently have four funds with over £400m under management. Simon says, “You shouldn’t have to sacrifice financial returns in order to do good for society.”

Simon shares how that exponential growth of social and sustainability bonds is now outpacing green bonds and that national governments are moving into green bonds. He explains how impact measurement happens only after engagement and that any measure is good as long as it provides evidence.

Highlights in this episode:

• You can do good for society without sacrificing financial returns 
• Bonds are key to bringing mainstream into impact investment
• The challenge of “how we measure impact”
• The importance of Social Alpha and Social Intensity Ratings
• How investments are mapped to impact categories and SDG sub-targets
• Knocking on doors of the banks with the capacity to issue larger sustainability bonds 
• We need national governments and aggregators in the bond market involved in social and sustainability bonds

Useful links:

Columbia Threadneedle - https://www.columbiathreadneedle.co.uk/

Simon Bond - https://www.linkedin.com/in/simon-bond-6500b367/

UK Social Bond Fund - https://www.columbiathreadneedle.co.uk/regional-home/institutional/ct-investment-capabilities/fixed-income/uk-social-bond-fund/

Annual report - https://www.columbiathreadneedle.co.uk/media/12629605/enuksocialbondfundannualreport_2018.pdf

Big Issue Invest - https://bigissueinvest.com/uk-social-bond-fund/

John Bird, founder of The Big Issue - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JohnBird,Baron_Bird

Peabody Trust - https://www.peabody.org.uk/

The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), EYE Bond Program (Education, Youth, Employment) - https://www.iadb.org/en/idb-finance/investors/eye-bond-program

Time Stamp:

[02:12] 33 years in corporate bonds and impact

[05:01] Analysing Peabody Trust in my first job

[07:50] US, UK and European Social Bond Funds are all growing

[12:06] Bonds give more targeted impact, Big Issue partnership

[19:17] Why the liquidity of bonds is important

[23:50] Measurement comes from engagement

[27:30] Green Bonds and the immense implication for society

[28:23] How to measure job impact and how to launch a social bond

[36:05] National government issuing green bonds

[38:11] Danone's social impact bond

[43:30] “Bringing mainstream into Social Investment”

[46:13] Mapping to bond issues to the underlying 169 SDG sub-targets

[48:00] Social bonds will grow exponentially, national governments are issuing Green Bonds

[49:12] Columbia Threadneedle is invested in this area and in me

[52:36] Simon Bond's life and career inspiration

[54:18] A good leader

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