Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - COH-LAB (Bridging the digitizing financial world to the changing attitudes and preferences of investors)

Teaser

Impact investing market is growing rapidly, driven mainly by millennials; the largest generation in history with about 200 million people, and a group of conscious digital natives for who making money is still the common goal, nevertheless look at investments to make a real...

Summary

Impact investing market is growing rapidly, driven mainly by millennials; the largest generation in history with about 200 million people, and a group of conscious digital natives for who making money is still the common goal, nevertheless look at investments to make a real impact on the planet and on society. 84% of millennials cite investing with a focus on social/environmental impact as the central value. The Global Impact Investing Network’s (GIIN) most recent estimate for the size of the impact investing market has doubled in 2018 to €228 billion in assets under management (AUM), up from €114 billion a year earlier. But, today it is very difficult to find impact investment products investors understand and are interested in. Studies reveal that while only 20% of EU28 population invest long-term, roughly 70% of people want to invest, but state that lack the knowledge and confidence is preventing them. At the same time financial institutions and organizations struggle to find investors and to promote their products to wider audiences.

The UN’s Conference on Trade and Development states that achieving the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will take €7 trillion in impact investments, while in 2017 the total official investments reached only €142.6 billion, which is an order of magnitude less! But, NGOs don’t have the digital tools to effectively promote impact investments to diverse audiences, as that is beyond their competencies. There simply aren’t any unified standards nor digital platforms for NGOs or Asset Managers to showcase and promote impact investments to the public. Legacy offerings are ad-hoc and fragmented with limited access from both sides, and fail to provide state-of-the-art content engagement, user-experience, efficiency and cost-effective environments. NGOs and small/medium Asset Managers don’t have the resources to develop such platforms. Furthermore, the industry today faces a key constraint: impact investments don’t have a common set of principles to guide the design of their impact-management systems. This creates complexity and confusion and makes it hard to differentiate among labels such as “sustainable,” “responsible,” and “impact investing.”

Coherra aims to be a direct response to these problems. Since 2017 we are building a unified, interoperable investments ecosystem to bridge this gap. In short, Coherra is the Netflix of impact investing: Like Netflix, Coherra is a multilingual platform that brings global, curated impact investments, levering the latest trends in ecosystem economy, content co-creation based on video (95% of message retention, compared to 10% by reading), and AI-based Business Intelligence. Coherra is the “Network of Networks” for the asset industry. Coherra is free to the investor. We operate a diversified B2B model with multiple streams of revenues.

The objective of the SME Instrument project is to accelerate a vision of creating a single, globally unified and universal ecosystem for impact investments - investments with the goal of an environmental and social impact. The Coherra ecosystem will be a collection of impact investment opportunities to promote this branch of investing and generate greater global impact. Our ambition is to establish a global framework for the impact investments, while the market is still young. This project will bring impact investing into the mainstream and provide the firepower to achieve the set out Sustainable Development Goals.

Work performed

\"Coherra\'s Phase 1 feasibility study covered following actions:

Comprehensive assessment of the technical viability of our AI framework and further refinements to out platform required to achieve final commercial version was done, results of which were used to generate a comprehensive Work Plan for SME Instrument Phase 2 project.

External parties represent an integral part in the project and are therefore critical for the success in meeting our goals. As part of the feasibly study in preparations toward SMEI Phase 2 and anticipated commercialization of Coherra, we have interviewed, performed due diligence and engaged in legal cooperation with several potential commercial partners, as well as technical partners and/or sub-contractors.

We have honed-in in the specific market of impact investing for maximum impact of commercial strategy. We performed focused research with targeted partners and contacted as many potential clients as possible to gather more feedback. The outcome are multiple established collaborations with multiple NGOs within the global area.

Coherra has conducted a comprehensive risk analysis using a standard risk management framework, to identify and mitigate the main risks in a most cost-effective manner. Mitigation measures and counteractions were then devised.

Coherra performed the Intellectual Property analysis. Our key IP assets consist of algorithms and business architecture; we are operating with a variety of technologies that are not in themselves subject to IPR, such as software and algorithms, that are largely open source. With advice from both our lawyers and IP experts and our partners, we have confirmed \"\"freedom to operate\"\" and established strategy to protecting our systems by keeping the relevant services encapsulated and only exposing the resulting data through APIs.

As the main result of the Phase 1 feasibility, we have built a detailed and comprehensive Work Plan towards achieving our specific technological objectives. The said Work Plan forms the basis for the Phase 2 of the project.


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Final results

Based on the Feasibility Study and updated business plan prepared during Phase 1 we conclude that the project will continue to Phase 2 with focus on impact investing. To that end we have begun the process of preparing a SME Instrument Phase 2 proposal that we will submit in June 2019 deadline. The most significant outcome of the Phase 1 project is the official collaboration between Coherra and Swiss Impact Investment Association (SIIA) to joining forces to creating a global platform for impact investments that will be launched by SIIA on September 16th, 2019 at the Zug Impact Summit.

Website & more info

More info: https://blog.coherra.com/.