Former TPG exec to lead AllianzGI’s impact measurement push

Allianz Global Investors has brought together various private markets impact efforts into a new unit alongside a newly formed impact measurement and management team. Diane Mak, who joined AllianzGI from TPG’s Y Analytics team in August 2021, will lead the measurement effort.

The 12-person Private Markets Impact unit, which houses various private equity and private credit strategies, is led by Matt Christensen, who joined the firm in 2020 after an eight-year stint leading impact and responsible investment for AXA Investment Managers.

AllianzGI manages €500 million of investor capital in private equity impact strategies, through the Allianz Impact Investment Fund, the AfricaGrow initiative and the recently launched Emerging Market Climate Action strategy, the firm said.

The EMCA strategy is targeting €500 million. It was launched in partership with the European Investment Bank and will invest in vehicles focused on climate mitigation, climate adaptation and access to electricity in emerging and developing markets. Investors include the German and Luxembourg governments, the Nordic development fund and Folksam.

The private credit team has raised more than $2 billion since 2017 to invest in “de-risked sustainable loans in emerging and frontier markets”, the firm said. Its focus is to work with development finance institutions, donors and commercial investors “to mobilise private capital for sustainable development.” For example, it manages a programme in collaboration with the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation: MCPP One Planet is a cross-sector portfolio of emerging market loans aligned with the Paris Agreement.

Under Mak, the measurement and management team will roll out Allianz’s impact framework “to facilitate the due diligence and selection of investments that contribute to material and positive impact,” the firm said. More detail on the framework, which combines enterprise level impact (using the Impact Management Project’s five dimensions) with an “investor contribution rating” to deliver an overall impact rating, is available here. Mak was previously a senior director of impact solutions at Y Analytics, the dedicated impact assessment unit of TPG.