François de Borchgrave
Founder & Director, Kois Invest
I got involved with impact investing after a career in business and investments. I really loved investing and saw the power of business, but wasn’t really inspired by the impact that business had. So I tried to look at a way that made businesses have an impact on and through the world. And I stumbled on impact investing and Toniic, amongst others, who really took me into this impact journey.
Once you start the journey, I mean for me, it’s a black or white journey. It’s not like you’re part impact and part not impact. If you start to understand that your money can really do good – can improve the world – then basically you want to use it all to do it. So you really want to go to the end of all the assets that you have, all the means that you have, to have a positive impact around you.
We try to have a broad impact, and really to find good investments that at the same time have a good impact. We have themes that we prefer: which are education, because also we believe it’s important for all the rest; health care, because we are quite knowledgeable in that sector; and then the whole environment thematic, I would say linked to climate change and sustainable development and that’s very important to us.
Try it first. Try to put your toes in the swimming pool and you’ll see that the water is not actually that cold and actually after that you’ll be, I would say, sucked in to doing more. So try it and start.