G7 Impact Taskforce

Our Goal

The world needs capital at scale to achieve its climate and sustainable development objectives. This need is particularly acute in developing countries, where the Covid-19 pandemic has further exacerbated the existing $2.5 trillion annual funding shortfall to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. 

While the impact investing market has been growing rapidly, with impact assets under management reaching $700 billion in 2019, even more capital needs to be mobilised to stimulate recovery from the COVID-19 crisis and drive fairer and more sustainable economies in the long term.

Working with our partners in the G7 and across the globe, particularly in developing countries, we want to propose practical solutions to harness private capital at scale for public good in order to facilitate a sustainable and inclusive recovery from the COVID-19 crisis and promote impact-driven economies and societies in the long term.

What we are doing to achieve it

In partnership with the Global Steering Group for impact investment (GSG), we co-lead the G7 Impact Taskforce, an independent, industry-led effort backed by the UK Government as part of the UK presidency of the G7 in 2021. The mandate of the Impact Taskforce is to contribute to a sustainable and inclusive recovery from the COVID-19 crisis and, more broadly, to help drive a sustainable, impact-driven global economy.  

The Impact Taskforce comprises members from G7 member countries, non-G7 countries and developing countries, as well as independent experts from the private sector – including asset managers, asset owners and corporates. The Taskforce also includes representatives from international organisations, academia, and civil society. A full list of the Taskforce members is available here.

The Impact Taskforce is chaired by the Right Honourable Nick Hurd, former UK MP and Minister, and Chair of the Access Foundation for Social Investment.

We lead one of the two workstreams of the Impact Taskforce, namely the Instruments and Policies to Scale Impact Investment Workstream. The objective of the workstream is to showcase implementable financing structures and produce a blueprint for Just Transition financing vehicles that can attract financing at scale (including from pension fund investors) to deliver an inclusive and socially beneficial transition to net-zero in developing countries, with a focus on Sub-Saharan Africa. The workstream is chaired by Dame Elizabeth Corley, Chair of the Impact Investing Institute, and comprises a Technical Working Group and an Advisory Panel. Secretariat support is provided by the Impact Investing Institute.

The Instruments and Policies Workstream is complemented by a second workstream on Impact Reporting, Integrity and Transparency, which is led by the GSG. This workstream focuses on fostering and facilitating discussions and recommendations for G7 governments and industry around impact transparency, integrity, and trust. This workstream is chaired by Douglas L. Peterson, President & CEO of S&P Global, with secretariat support from the GSG.

Both workstreams of the Impact Taskforce will produce technical documents and recommendations that will be shared under the UK´s G7 Presidency with Foreign Affairs and Development Ministers, standard setters, and the financial services industry in December 2021.   

Instruments and Policies to Scale Impact Investment Workstream of the G7 Impact Taskforce

Chair of the Workstream – Dame Elizabeth Corley

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Chair, Impact Investing Institute

Elizabeth is the Chair of the Instruments and Policies to Scale Impact Investment Workstream of the G7 Impact Taskforce.

Elizabeth’s career has been in financial services. She was CEO of Allianz Global Investors, initially for Europe and then globally, from 2005 to 2016. She continued to act as an advisor to the company in various capacities until the end of 2019. Elizabeth was previously at Merrill Lynch Investment Managers (formerly Mercury Asset Management), Coopers & Lybrand, where she was a consulting partner, and at Sun Alliance.

She is a non-executive director of Pearson plc, BAE Systems plc and Morgan Stanley Inc.

She is chair of the Impact Investing Institute; a director of the Green Finance Institute; serves on the investment committee of the Leverhulme Trust; is a member of the CFA Future of Finance Advisory Council, AQR Asset Management Institute, the Committee of 200 and the 300 Club.

As well as being a trustee of the British Museum, Elizabeth is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and is also a published author of crime thrillers. She was awarded a CBE in January 2015 and a DBE in June 2019 for services to the economy and financial services.

In 2016 Elizabeth received an honorary doctorate from the London Institute of Banking and Finance (formerly the IFS University College) and in June 2019 she was made an honorary fellow of the London Business School.

Special Advisor and Technical Lead – Laurie Spengler

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Founder & CEO, Courageous Capital Advisors, LLC and Board Member & Lead Expert, Impact Investing Institute

Laurie is the Special Advisor and Technical Lead of the Instruments and Policies to Scale Impact Investment Workstream of the G7 Impact Taskforce.

Laurie is President and CEO of Courageous Capital Advisors LLC, an impact investing advisory firm. Among her current board engagements, Laurie serves as a non-executive director of the CDC Group (the UK DFI) and the UK Impact Investing Institute. A Senior Fellow and Advisory Council member of Casei3 at the Fuqua Business School, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Previously, Laurie was CEO of Enclude Ltd and Enclude Capital Advisory UK Limited. Prior to building Enclude, Laurie was founder and CEO of Central European Advisory Group; she also worked as an attorney with the New York, Brussels and Prague offices of White & Case. Laurie has a JD from Harvard University and an undergraduate degree from Stanford University.

Technical Working Group

Advisory Panel

The full list of Advisory Panel members is available here.

We are grateful to the UK Government’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (through the FCDO Impact Programme), BNP Paribas and the EQT Foundation for their financial support of the Impact Taskforce.