MICROCAPITAL BRIEF: MAPFRE, GSI Launch $57m Global Social Impact Fund to Invest in Africa, Central America

The Spain-based insurance firm MAPFRE (Mutualidad Agrupación Propietarios Fincas Rústicas de España) and Global Social Impact (GSI), a Spanish investment firm, recently announced the creation of the Global Social Impact Fund to invest in “companies with high social impact on both frontier and emerging markets.” The fund, which will invest primarily via debt, has a target volume of EUR 50 million (USD 57.1 million). Its sectors of focus are agriculture, energy and financial inclusion. It will begin its deployments in sub-Saharan Africa and later expand to Central America. MAPFRE and Santa Comba, the Spanish holding company that is sole shareholder, have provided unspecified amounts of initial funding for the vehicle. MAPFRE’s asset management unit will serve as investment advisor for the fund.

Jose Luiz Jimenez, the Chief Investment Officer at MAPFRE, stated, “We believe that impact investment has a long way to go and, after the pandemic, socially responsible investment is going to emerge stronger.”

MAPFRE operates approximately 13,000 offices in 44 countries. It offers life, automobile and multi-risk insurance. At year-end 2019, it reported total assets of EUR 72.5 billion (USD 82.8 billion), return on average assets of 1.83 and return on average equity of 7.2 percent.

GSI is an impact investment firm based in Spain that has a portfolio of seven investments in Spain and East Africa. Financial details on GCI and Santa Comba remain confidential.

By Andrew Janni, Research Associate

Sources and Additional Resources

Press release from MAPFRE
https://noticias.mapfre.com/en/am-gsi-social-impact-fund/

MAPFRE homepage
https://www.mapfreinsurance.com/

MAPFRE annual report
https://www.mapfre.com/statics/juntasgenerales/2020/Consolidated_Annual_Accounts.pdf

GSI homepage
https://globalsocialimpact.es/

Santa Comba homepage
https ://santacombagestion.com/

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