“Your fiduciary responsibility to your future pensioners is that there’s still a world for them to live in 40 or 50 years from now. Stop looking at purely financial returns and start investing in true scalable solutions.”
— Jean-Philippe de Schrevel
Jean-Philippe de Schrevel is the Founder and Managing Partner at Bamboo Capital Partners, an impact investing platform which provides innovative financing solutions to businesses in emerging markets. He has dedicated most of his career to the development of the impact investing field, during which time he has launched eight investment funds and raised over $1 billion across a variety of asset classes and sectors.
Jean-Philippe spent the early years of his life in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo, moving with his parents to Belgium at the age of seven and then going on to study Development Economics at the University of Namur. His early career began as a Junior Economist in Bucharest in the period just after the fall of Ceaușescu, after which he went on to McKinsey Brussels, which took him on engagements around various parts of the world. He became the CEO of a Microfinance foundation in Argentina for a year and then returned to Europe, where he continued to work in microfinance and came to work at Dexia Asset Management. Jean-Philippe co-founded BlueOrchard in 2001 and then went on to found Bamboo Capital Partners in 2007. He holds an MBA from the Wharton School of Business and is fluent in French, English, and Spanish.
Widely considered to be a global pioneer in the field of impact investing, Jean-Philippe has made it his life’s mission to help develop solutions to some of the most critical problems on our planet today. In this episode, Jean-Philippe shares how a trip to India as a 3rd year student in his twenties and witnessing some of the problems and suffering there shaped his future. He also discusses his Faith and how this has also played a crucial role in his mission.
In our discussion, Jean-Philippe tells us about Bamboo Capital Partners’ investment strategies and their five main Funds. We talk about Bamboo’s partnerships with various UN agencies and International NGO’s and the SDG500 Impact Investment platform. We hear Jean-Philippe’s true definition of impact investing and we discuss the role of technology in impact investing now and in the future.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. You can watch the interview on YouTube here.
What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.
SCROLL BELOW FOR LINKS AND SHOW NOTES…
SELECTED LINKS FROM THIS EPISODE:
- Connect with Jean-Philippe: LinkedIn
- Bamboo Capital Partners
- BlueOrchard
- University of Namur
- Wharton Business School
- McKinsey Brussels
- Dexia
- Bernard Herman
- Cedric Lombard
- Dexia MicroCredit Fund
- BlueOrchard Microfinance Fund
- International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)
- UN Capital Development Fund
- Bamboo Capital Oasis Fund
- International Trade Centre
- Care USA
- Smart Africa
- The World Bank
- OGEF Fund
- OMDF Fund
- SDG-500
- ABC Fund
- US AID
- Palladium
SHOW NOTES:
[00:00] Episode intro and a quick bio of the guest; Jean-Philippe de Schrevel
[01:49] We hear about Jean-Philippe’s childhood and student years and the trip to India that was to shape his future
[06:26] How Jean-Philippe came to co-found BlueOrchard in 2001
[12:00] Jean-Philippe’s mission in developing impact investing and his deeply rooted faith, values and ambitions
[13:35] How Jean-Philippe came to found Bamboo Capital Partners while still at BlueOrchard
[17:38] Bamboo Capital Partners’ mission and what impact investing actually means
[22:26] The repositioning of Bamboo as a platform open to partnerships
[30:49] We learn more about the SDG-500 initiative and the SDG-500 funds that Bamboo Capital Partners manages
[38:36] How Bamboo Capital Partners make their investment decisions and what screening methods are used
[41:00] Jean-Philippe describes two sample investments that Bamboo Capital Partnerships have made
[45:00] How Jean-Philippe verifies and measures the impact of their investments
[50:58] Bamboo’s typical investor profile
[56:52] The role of technology in impact investing now and in the future
[58:54] The single most important challenge right now in the sustainable impact investment space
[59:15] What Jean-Philippe knows now about impact investing that he wishes he knew when he launched Blue Orchard and Bamboo Capital
[01:00:50] Lessons learned from investments that didn’t work out as planned
[01:05:30] Advice for anyone looking to get into the impact investing space
MORE JEAN-PHILIPPE DE SCHREVEL QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW:
“I think when you’re young and motivated and focused and you know that what you’re doing is the right thing, you don’t wait for the right moment, you just go.”
— Jean-Philippe de Schrevel
“It was not just a job. It’s a mission, and when you follow your mission in life, there’s no downside.”
— Jean-Philippe de Schrevel
“We’re an impact investor. We have a fiduciary responsibility to our investors. In the past fiduciary responsibility meant I need to deliver the return I promised you. Well, in impact investing, fiduciary responsibility means I have to deliver the social impact and the financial impact that I promised you. And if I’m not equipping my investment process and my teams to actually deliver on those, then I’m a liar.”
— Jean-Philippe de Schrevel
“We have big problems in the world, as we’ve seen during the summer, all over the globe and if people don’t wake up to that reality, then we’re all going to die…there, very simple. Now, it pales in comparison to the target, yes, but we are doing what we can, the best we can and how quickly we can, by being true to our mission, which is helping social entrepreneurs solve real problems of real poor people, in really difficult markets, by investing as best as we can.”
— Jean-Philippe de Schrevel
“I think we are at the very beginning of something I cannot even imagine, but technology will be the driving force of the scaleability of impact in many sectors, I’m convinced of that.”
— Jean-Philippe de Schrevel
