2X Collaborative mobilizes investors to scale volume and impact of capital flowing to gender-smart businesses
On the occasion of International Women’s Day 2022, the 2X Collaborative announces its latest round of members today, now spanning 35 institutions across the spectrum of investors globally.
As one of the most recent members joining, Claudia Vroom, COO at Triple Jump highlights:
“At Triple Jump we’re thrilled to be joining the 2X Collaborative to help mobilize more capital towards women economic empowerment and address the unique needs of women as customers, entrepreneurs and employees in our financial inclusion, SME finance, and access to energy sector activities.”
Launched at the UN Generation Equality Forum 2021 in partnership with GenderSmart and the Investor Leadership Network (ILN), the 2X Collaborative is a leading industry body for gender lens investing.
Its mission is to equip investors and to increase the volume and impact of capital flowing towards women’s economic empowerment. The global network provides members with access to peer learning, networking, knowledge, co-investment platforms, partnership and training opportunities, and innovative investment tools.
“When we invest in women, women in turn invest in themselves, their families and their communities. This is demonstrated in a new Citi GPS report, which finds that achieving gender parity in business growth globally could add $1.6 – $2.3 trillion to GDP, and 288-433 million jobs,”
said Jorge Rubio Nava, Global Head of Citi Social Finance.
“We’re committed to doing our part to advance gender equity, working alongside our peers in the 2X Collaborative to catalyze new industry solutions, as well as delivering on Citi’s commitment to invest in opportunities for 10 million women globally by 2025.”
Building on the 2X Challenge which has invested and mobilized more than US$ 11 billion under the 2X criteria since 2018, the 2X Collaborative now brings together the full range of capital providers and mobilizers: Development finance institutions and multilateral development banks, pension funds, family offices, commercial banks, private equity and venture capital funds, and other private sector investors.
Mark Bowman, Vice President, Policy & Partnerships of EBRD announces:
“We are very happy to join our peers’ efforts in the 2X Collaborative to promote gender equality and equality of opportunity, a key strategic focus at the EBRD. The 2X Collaborative is an invaluable platform for knowledge sharing and learning, contributing to the achievement of our common goal: invest in women, invest in the world.”
The 2X Collaborative has launched a number of practical tools for investors, such as the Gender Smart Climate Finance Guide & Toolkit launched at COP 26, featuring 11 sector specific and thematic guidance notes to dive into the Why?, the What? And the How? of investing at the gender and climate nexus.
Laura Davis, Managing Partner at RENEW emphasizes the role of the 2X Collaborative as a one-stop-shop for investors:
“As an investment manager focused on building world-class, gender-smart companies in Africa, I am overwhelmed by the time and effort it takes me to simply get a meeting with a gender-focused investor, locate and understand new gender-smart investment tools, and connect with peers to work on a deal together. I am so excited because The 2X Collaborative helps me with all of these challenges. Not only is 2X organizing everything in one place, but it also uses all of our collective energy to drive women’s economic empowerment forward.”
The 2X Collaborative welcomes capital providers and mobilizers along the risk-return-spectrum and markets globally to join the growing network investing towards a gender equal world.
– END –
Members’ quotes:
At ADB, our sovereign and private sector operations are guided by operational priority two: accelerating progress in gender equity. Our private sector financing aims to increase women’s engagement across economic sectors and in many of these investments, we are co-financing with several 2X Collaborative members across the Asia and Pacific region. While our institutions tend to develop complementary gender approaches and share initial good practices, the 2X Collaborative comes as an enabler to promote harmonization and co-development among all members.
Suzanne Gaboury, Director General, Private Sector Operations Department, ADB
“At ALIVE we are excited to join the 2XCollaborative network and help drive more progress in the gender lens investing field. We are excited to start working alongside other practitioners towards the promotion of gender equity through inclusive investment and post investment practices. We believe that being part of this highly engaged and curated community will allow us to share knowledge and learn from other members, identifying effective ways to support women as entrepreneurs, leaders, employees and consumers.”
Santiago Alvarez, Co-founder and Managing Partner, ALIVE Ventures
“Our executive decision to join the 2X Collaborative and align ourselves with leaders in Gender Lens Investing supports our goals of empowering women and ensuring equitable opportunities for financial inclusion. With focused attention on fulfilling our mandate and maintaining alignment with the SDGs, The Bahamas Development Bank is devoted to creating a measurable impact on The Bahamas’ economic prosperity, resilience, financial inclusion, and gender equity. We are truly excited about the potential that lies in partnering the 2X Collaborative.”
Ashley Outten, Financial Controller, The Bahamas Development Bank
“Dalberg has been proud of supporting 2X since its inception. While there has been significant progress in the growth and depth of gender smart investing over the past several years, the need and the opportunity remains tremendous and we are excited to engage with investors and other members of the community to share best practices and to support new frontiers”
Rachna Saxena, Partner, Dalberg Advisors
“The 2X Challenge was a great starting point for DFIs to share knowledge and to promote investment in women. Going further, the 2X Collaborative allows us to expand gender-lens investing practices to and share knowledge within a wider group of commercial investors.”
Roland Siller, CEO, DEG
“We are very happy to join our peers’ efforts in the 2X Collaborative to promote gender equality and equality of opportunity, a key strategic focus at the EBRD. The 2X Collaborative is an invaluable platform for knowledge sharing and learning, contributing to the achievement of our common goal:
invest in women, invest in the world.”
Mark Bowman, Vice President, Policy & Partnerships of EBRD
“To achieve the Sustainable Development Goals we need to mobilise and leverage as much capital as possible for gender lens investment. In fact, the success of the European Investment Bank’s SheInvest initiative further illustrates the transformative potential of GLI, helping to build more prosperous and resilient communities for everyone. As the first MDB 2X Challenge member, the EIB mobilized more than € 2 billion ($ 2.2 billion) in GLI since the beginning of the initiative in late 2019, providing African women with better access to finance, as well as dedicated coaching and tailored services and products, thereby unlocking much-needed business and social transformation potential. The 2X Collaborative is a remarkable platform – which among others provided EIB the opportunity to co-author the 2X Gender-smart Climate Finance Toolkit with 2X Climate Taskforce partners CDC and EBRD. With gender equality being at the heart of EIB’s mission, I am proud to support the 2X Collaborative and together with our partners from the 2X Challenge and Team Europe encourage others to join.”
Thomas Östros, Vice-President of the European Investment Bank (EIB)
“At GIF we’re investing at the intersection of gender equality, innovation, and impact-first financing to accelerate ideas with the potential to transform unequal gender relations and empower the world’s poorest women and girls. I am delighted that we have joined the 2X Collaborative to partner with other mission-aligned organisations to generate impact and advance gender-lens investing across the development finance institution community.”
Alix Peterson Zwane, CEO, Global Innovation Fund (GIF)
“Gender-smart investing is smart investing which is why Innpact is so excited to become a member of the 2X Collaborative. Partnerships with all kinds of stakeholders are necessary to achieve greater change and to address the wide range of needs related to gender-focused investing. In partnering with the other members of the 2X collaborative, we look forward to helping more funds define meaningful gender strategies and deliver deeper and more sustainable outcomes as a result.”
Adriana Balducci, Associate Director, Innpact S.A.
“The jury is back in—when women are engaged in enterprises as leaders, partners, investors, collaborators, entrepreneurs and executors, the data shows those ventures have improved performance, increased innovation, better problem-solving and enhanced reputations. At MEDA, we are committed to using gender, diversity, equity and inclusion to tackle barriers in financial markets. We use a market systems approach to ensure financial instruments are designed for the needs of the market (especially for women and youth entrepreneurs), rather than the market adapting to the financial instruments available. This is a challenge that MEDA is seeking to address in the investment ecosystem and is why we are very pleased to join the 2X collaborative.”
Dr. Dorothy Nyambi, President & CEO, MEDA
“MIGA is proud to be a founding member of the 2X Collaborative. This broad and inclusive network of investors will promote gender equality by building awareness and capacity and creating a space to develop and share innovative private sector strategies. The Collaborative will also support our own goal of narrowing gender gaps in MIGA-supported projects.”
Hiroshi Matano, Executive Vice President, Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA)
“Reducing inequalities and tackling the obstacles that still limit women’s economic participation and opportunities are key to accelerate development and reduce poverty. Therefore, we have anchored gender equality as a cross-sector objective in our strategy and aim to empower women through our investments. Joining the 2X Challenge highlights this commitment and we look forward to working with our DFI colleagues to advance gender-lens investing.”
Sabine Gaber and Michael Wancata, Members of the Executive Board, OeEB
“As a general partner of growth equity funds, our job is to diligence, understand, and influence the growth of businesses. In short to find and build value. Failing to incorporate a gender lens approach to growth equity investing is the equivalent of deliberately ignoring a key driver of business performance. Joining the 2X Collaborative and learning from our peers in the various communities of practice will make us a better GP team. Consistent with our experience building ESG principles across our investment process and into our portfolio companies, incorporating a gender lens is necessary as a value lever, resulting in competitively advantaged businesses and superior investment outcomes.”
Doug Hewson, Managing Partner, Portland Private Equity
“Proparco is proud to be a founding member of the 2X Challenge and to have contributed to its success over the past few years. Our ambitious objective for gender equality can be amplified thanks to the 2X Collaborative, we are very happy to participate in this effort to mobilise even more capital from private investors and to see new members join this initiative.”
Gregory Clemente, CEO of Proparco
“As an investment manager focused on building world-class, gender-smart companies in Africa, I am overwhelmed by the time and effort it takes me to simply get a meeting with a gender-focused investor, locate and understand new gender-smart investment tools, and connect with peers to work on a deal together. I am so excited because The 2X Collaborative helps me with all of these challenges. Not only is 2X organizing everything in one place, but it also uses all of our collective energy to drive women’s economic empowerment forward.”
Laura Davis, Managing Partner, RENEW
“We believe that the 2X challenge is a ambitious and timeous intervention that will support investment into women-owned businesses and into promoting gender parity in the financial services industry. As such the team is excited to join a collaborative of like-minded investors and stakeholders.”
Catherine Swanepoel, Chief Investment Officer, South Suez Capital
“Women are disproportionately affected by poverty. Through our investments, we aim to strengthen women´s economic empowerment to contribute to sustainable development and inclusive growth. We also see that companies with more diverse management teams and organizations are more financially viable and sustainable. Being part of the 2X Collaborative, we share our vision with a group of like-minded investors and get access to studies, knowledge and tools that will strengthen our joint performance in working towards a more gender equal and sustainable future.”
Maria Håkansson, CEO at Swedfund
“As a pioneer in gender-lens private-equity, Sweef Capital sees significant benefits in being an active member within the 2X Collaborative through contributing to, and benefiting from, building the ecosystem for investing in women. Sweef Capital is focused on seeing greater gender equality and diversity models being integrated within the entrepreneur communities in local markets as well as within the institutional investor community by building awareness around the role of women within social impact frameworks.”
Jennifer Buckley, Founder and Managing Director, Sweef Capital
“At Triple Jump we’re thrilled to be joining the 2XCollaborative to help mobilize more capital towards women economic empowerment and address the unique needs of women as customers, entrepreneurs and employees in our financial inclusion, SME finance, and access to energy sector activities.“
Claudia Vroom, COO at Triple Jump
Source:2Xcollaborative.org