When Kenza Himmi, the head of impact investing and partnerships at the United Nations Joint Staff Pension Fund, attends a pitch meeting with a fund manager, she keeps an ear out for a few non-negotiable items.

She wants to know the fund's intent and whether it is designed to direct capital to environmental and social solutions. She wants to know how the fund measures the impact of its investments. And, of course, she wants to know if a fund’s investments will create value over time.

Some managers have impressed; others, not so much. In this episode, Himmi, who will be a panellist at the Investor Summit: North America in New York City on 5 November, takes us behind the scenes and tells us what she likes to hear from fund managers during pitch meetings.

Is the field of impact investing growing in a healthy way, or is it being co-opted by firms for whom positive impact is secondary to asset gathering?

In this episode of The New Private Markets Podcast, we explore this fundamental question with Jed Emerson, a true veteran of the impact field, an author of multiple books and papers on the topic, and until April of this year, the chief impact officer for US wealth management firm AlTi Tiedemann Global. He's also the founder of Blended Value Group and holds a number of advisory positions.

The conversation was prompted by a lively online debate surrounding coverage of New Private Markets' Impact 50, in which Emerson had questioned the link between the dollar size of a fund and the size of its impact. You can read about the online exchange here, and you can read about the Impact 50 here.

We also touch on the distinction between NPM's Impact 50 and Impact Assets' IA 50, a different resource for investors in the impact space with which Emerson has been involved for more than a decade.

Financial performance is the key issue that will determine the viability of impact investing at scale in the long term. Given the relative youth of most impact funds, it is a topic still open to debate.

Asset manager Schroders has been examining the performance of its impact investments. The UK-headquartered firm released a study in collaboration with Oxford University’s Business School earlier this year which examined impact’s performance in listed equities. It has now released further research focused on private equity. Read NPM's coverage of the findings here.

The results are positive: private equity impact investments have outperformed the wider buyout and growth markets over the last decade.

In this episode, we speak to Schroders' co-head of impact management Catherine Macaulay and head of sustainability and impact for PE Paul Lamacraft to get their perspective on the findings.