Founder of impact-investing platform in Singapore bags award

Singapore

THE founder of a Singapore-based impact investing platform has clinched an Oslo Business for Peace Award, alongside Tesla founder Elon Musk and two others.

Durreen Shahnaz won for her work with Impact Investment Exchange (IIX), dubbed the world's first stock exchange dedicated to social enterprises. It was founded in 2009, and has "positively impacted" some 10 million lives, according to the award's committee.

According to its website, the IIX has "mobilised" more than S$10 million worth of capital for development. It provides advice to investors looking to invest in sustainable development projects while earning a return. This form of investment is commonly known as impact investing, with the investments channelled to projects with social impact and that can generate a financial return. IIX said that it has structured a debt instrument known as the women's livelihood bond, with proceeds lent to the basket of microfinance institutions and enterprises that has activities benefiting women.

Prof Shahnaz began her career at Morgan Stanley in New York as the first Bangladeshi woman to work on Wall Street. She then returned to Bangladesh to use her expertise in investment finance at Grameen Bank, according to her biodata.

With her experience, she saw the "unbearable gap between the worlds of finance and development".

While teaching social innovation and entrepreneurship at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore, she wrote about the need for investment to fuel businesses that were uplifting communities and leading to sustainable development. Her writings led her to a meeting with the Rockefeller Foundation. She was eventually spurred to take on impact investing at the height of the global financial crisis in 2009, as the world "reflected on the true role of financial markets meant for human well-being", IIX said.