Impact Investment Exchange (IIX) has successfully priced the US$27.7 million Women’s Livelihood BondTM 3 (WLB3), the third bond in the award-winning Women’s Livelihood BondTM Series (WLB Series). Advancing a total of 13 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the WLB3 complies with the International Capital Markets Association (ICMA) Social Bond Principles and will support 180,000 underserved women and women entrepreneurs in the Asia Pacific region to respond, to recover from, and to build resilience in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. The WLB3 is also the maiden investment of IIX’s Women’s Catalyst Fund, a next generation gender lens vehicle designed to accelerate innovative financial instruments for women.
When Durreen Shahnaz first floated the idea of creating a new financing vehicle explicitly to help underserved women entrepreneurs in Asia, bankers and financiers advised her against including the word “women.” Calling it the Women’s Livelihood Bond, they said, might chase away investors. Better to just call it an emerging market bond.
No way, said Shahnaz, founder and chief executive of Singapore-based Impact Investment Exchange (IIX). She and her team stood proudly by the bond’s overt gender lens. IIX’s bonds—two so far with a third on the way—have since proved a hit among investors, improved the lives of hundreds of thousands of working women across Asia, and brought a new way of investing to international markets.
Impact Investment Exchange CEO Durreen Shahnaz still feels that more can be done to give under-served women a voice in the market. PHOTO: BUSINESS TIMES
SINGAPORE (THE BUSINESS TIMES) – Singapore-based capital firm Impact Investment Exchange (IIX) has priced its US$27.7 million (S$37 million), four-year Women’s Livelihood Bond 3 (WLB3) at 3.95 per cent, a company spokesman told The Business Times on Tuesday (Dec 8).
SINGAPORE-BASED capital firm Impact Investment Exchange (IIX) has priced its US$27.7 million, four-year Women’s Livelihood Bond 3 (WLB3) at 3.95 per cent, a company spokesperson told The Business Times (BT) on Tuesday.
The WLB3 is the third tranche under the US$150 million WLB Series, a series of debt securities meant to create sustainable livelihoods for over three million women across developing countries, IIX said.
Singapore-based Impact Investment Exchange (IIX) has issued its US$27m Women’s Livelihood Bond 3 (WLB3), the third in the $150m WLB series of gender bonds aimed at creating sustainable livelihoods for more than 3 million women in developing countries.
WLB3 will be backing enterprises in India, Indonesia, Cambodia and the Philippines that are directly supporting women to respond to or recover from the economic effects of the pandemic.
December 7, 2020 – Washington, DC – Impact Investment Exchange (IIX) has successfully closed the US$27.7 million Women’s Livelihood Bond 3 (WLB3), the third bond in the award-winning Women’s Livelihood BondTM Series (WLB Series), which is a part of the P4G Partnership. Advancing a total of 13 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the WLB3 complies with the International Capital Market Association’s Social Bond Principles and will support 180,000 underserved women in the Asia Pacific to respond, to recover from, and to build resilience in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. The WLB3 is also the maiden investment of IIX’s Women’s Catalyst Fund, a next generation gender lens vehicle designed to accelerate innovative financial instruments for women.
Photo credit: Impact Investment Exchange (IIX)
The Impact Investment Exchange (IIX) has successfully closed its US$27.7 million Women’s Livelihood BondTM 3 (WLB3), the third bond in the award-winning Women’s Livelihood BondTM Series. Advancing 13 Sustainable Development Goals, the WLB3 complies with the International Capital Markets Association Social Bond Principles and will support 180,000 underserved women and women entrepreneurs in the Asia-Pacific region to respond, recover from, and to build resilience in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Deng Zhenzhong, political affairs member of the Executive Yuan, and Li Yingjie, director of the American Institute in Taiwan, announced on the 14th that they have jointly participated in the third phase of the “Women’s Livelihood Bond Case” to help disadvantaged women and female entrepreneurs in Southeast Asian countries obtain loans. Promote women’s economic empowerment and sustainable development in the Indo-Pacific region.
The WLB series will give more opportunities for Cambodian women in making profitable business for better lives.
Cambodia is one of the countries that benefits from Asia-based Impact Investment Exchange (IIX)’s Women’s Livelihood Bond Series as they recently won the P4G Scale-Up Partnership to scale a first-of-its-kind innovative finance solution for gender-equal COVID-resilience and green growth across Asia.
A client in Cambodia supported by IIX’s WLB1 (Women’s Livelihood Bond 1)., by Impact Investment Exchange. Photo: UN
Many women running small businesses in emerging markets in developing countries have to juggle their business objectives with family obligations and personal savings goals. By supporting a women-focused bond providing loans to microfinance institutions and impact enterprises, the UN is helping women entrepreneurs facing similar challenges, to succeed in their professional and private lives.