As one of the world’s leading financial institutions, Barclays has a clear strategic objective to support projects that create positive social change. They approached Delio to act as their technology partner for the launch of Impact Agora – an institutional marketplace for impact investing.
The Impact Agora project aims to bring institutions and investors together to directly impact urgent social and environmental issues. To achieve this, Barclays wanted to create a digital platform that would act as an impact investing ecosystem, enabling deal sharing between accelerators, fund managers, investor networks, corporates, family offices, foundations and wealth managers.
By digitising the entire process from origination through to reporting, Barclays wanted to reduce the traditional barriers to private investments and raise the profile of impact investing with intermediaries and entrepreneurs.
Delio worked with Barclays from the outset of the project, drawing on our significant experience of building white-labelled private investment platforms. Our goal was to create a tailored platform that enabled institutions to quickly share and promote impact investment opportunities with a select audience of potential investors.
Our technology enables the project managers to retain complete control over the deals that are being shared, the profile of investor that has access to them and how opportunities are being engaged with. Initially launched as a pilot programme in late 2019, the platform was launched fully in March 2020.
To support the effective launch of the Impact Agora marketplace, Delio consulted with Barclays to develop a go-to-market strategy to maximise dealflow and investor engagement. This included hosting a digital launch event for the project which was attended by more than 200 financial professionals and investors.
The Impact Agora project has quickly become a key marketplace for institutional investors interested in the latest impact investment opportunities. The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020 has also highlighted the importance of digitising the impact investment process given the limited number of pitch events and face to face meetings that would traditionally support promotion of these deals.
At launch, the Impact Agora ecosystem was being actively used 40 financial institutions to promote, share and access dealflow. Deals valued at more than £250m has been shared within a month of the ecosystem going live, with completed deals being transacted through the marketplace within six weeks of launch. It is anticipated that more than £500m of impact investment opportunities will be live on the platform by September 2020.
Speaking at the Impact Agora launch event, Damian Payiatakis, Head of Impact Investing at Barclays, explained that Delio’s technological infrastructure was the natural choice to support the project given their experience of using our platform to manage their s part of their own private markets offering.
“We’ve seen a growing demand internationally from clients looking to invest in impact projects. The reality is that it’s difficult for us to onboard every impact opportunity in terms of scale and fit, and even if we do it’s a challenge to match the opportunity with the right client capital. We use Delio technology to run both our direct investment and EIS services, helping us to scale these private market propositions for our clients. Therefore, it was natural to partner with them to build this wider ecosystem.”
We use Delio technology to run both our direct investment and EIS services, helping us to scale these private market propositions for our clients.
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