News from 04-08-2015

BDB to invest in EIF's Social Impact Accelerator Initiative

The European Investment Fund (EIF) has secured the Bulgarian Development Bank (BDB) as additional investor for its Social Impact Accelerator Initiative (SIA). The Initiative is oriented towards a public-private partnership for investments in small and medium-sized enterprises with important social impact. BDB has committed to invest EUR 1 million into the Initiative along with Deutsche Bank and Credit Cooperatif. This investment contributes to diversifying SIA’s source of funding, especially in Central and Eastern Europe, including Bulgaria, which is still a comparably young and undeveloped market for social enterprises and social funds.

SIA is established as a fund of funds with the aim to attract appr. EUR 250 million with EIB and EIF as main investors. The indicative expected return of the investments is over 5%, and the termination of the Initiative is envisaged to be 15 years.

Already in 2014, the initial resources under SIA had been fully committed into five social impact funds. Since then, the fund size has been increased twice to meet market demands. Priority investments shall be made in funds with social impact which main targets are education, new jobs creation, development of under-developed geographic regions, care for elderly people, health care, support of socially vulnerable groups, integration of disabled persons, environment protection.

SIA is the first pan-European fund with public-private partnership for social impact investing which had been launched in 2013. It addresses the growing need for availability of equity finance to support social enterprises – a segment of the business world which is becoming increasingly instrumental in promoting social inclusion, providing alternative sources of employment for marginalised social groups and contributing to growth.

SIA also marks a first step in the EIB Group’s (European Investment Bank and EIF) strategy to pioneer the impact investing space and respond to the wider EU policy aim of establishing a sustainable funding market for social entrepreneurship in Europe. Beyond simple financial return targets, these social impact funds seek to trigger positive societal change as a result of their impact conscious investment activity.