Can impact investing become the default setting?

A decade ago, impact investing was a satellite allocation — a small carve-out that let boards signal intent without disturbing the core portfolio. That model is quietly disappearing.

The most interesting shift is happening inside mainstream mandates: renewable infrastructure, transition-focused private debt and sustainable real estate now compete on risk-adjusted return, not just on values.

The result is that 'impact' is increasingly a property of the whole portfolio rather than a separate sleeve — and measurement frameworks are catching up, slowly.

None of this removes the hard questions: what counts as impact, who verifies it, and how do boards avoid paying a premium for a label?

In this article we look at where impact mandates are genuinely delivering, where the marketing outruns the substance, and how investors can tell the difference.