Open Access

While ESG investing has presented an impressive growth history within institutional investing in the past, this thesis aims to investigate whether impact investing could potentially mirror the ESG investing success story going forward. For that reason, the thesis analyses the past success of ESG investing and compares this to the less established investing practice of impact investing in order to find necessary requirements for the volume of impact investing to grow. After comparing the characteristics of ESG investing and impact investing and after analysing suitable asset classes and potential investors for both investment trends, four key success factors for the progress of institutional impact investing have been identified. These are (1) a general interest in society and the investment community for more direct social and environmental impact, (2) the existence of suitable investment products, (3) a regulatory framework that allows and incentivizes institutional investors to purchase impact investment products and (4) a mechanism with which impact investments products can be objectively classified and their impact can be objectively measured. While the first three success factors should not hinder the future growth of impact investing, the problem of objectively classifying and measuring an impact investment seems difficult to overcome in the near future.