Sustainability | ~ 5 min read

Making an impact with research

Diane Mak | Matt Christensen

07/05/2025

Independent academic studies are integral to our impact investment process. That’s why we have launched a new award – to recognise and celebrate the research that helps us understand impact outcomes.

The fast-evolving area of impact investing seeks to address some of the most important global challenges of our time. Our approach to impact is built around a proprietary impact framework which determines those companies that qualify as impact investments. When assessing the impact contribution of a potential investment, we lean on external research as one of the inputs into that process. In fact, in 2024 we used 120 research papers in our due diligence assessments for our private markets impact strategies.

To recognise the importance of such research – and encourage similar work in areas that are relevant to impact investing – we have launched our Impact Research Award.

We are delighted to present the 2024 award to Associate Professor Taren Sanders, Program Leader in the Motivation and Behaviour Research Program at the Australian Catholic University. He led a review of meta-analyses to further our understanding of the effects of screen use on education and health outcomes for children and adolescents.

His paper, “An umbrella review of the benefits and risks associated with youths’ interactions with electronic screens”, found that there can be both positive and negative outcomes depending on the form of screen use, taking into account the type of content consumed and the context of usage.

This research was an important input into our assessment of an EdTech provider for one of our impact strategies, determining both the potential for positive learning outcomes associated with narrated e-books and the potential magnitude of those outcomes.

The selection panel who judged the prize noted the potential for this research to become “a cornerstone paper for the topic of screen use across different domains”.

More research needed

By establishing this annual award, we hope to encourage more research in areas of focus for impact investing. The aim is to continuously improve our investment selection process and thereby help to increase the positive impact of our work alongside the generation of financial returns. We also believe that elevating research in this way will benefit the impact investing ecosystem more broadly, to the extent that increasing amounts of capital will flow towards more impactful investment opportunities over time. That is the ultimate prize.

Watch Matt Christensen talking about our impact investing approach

Learn more in our Sustainable Investing and Stewardship Report

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