SWISOX was born with the intent of addressing the inefficient impact investing market and the need for a dedicated liquid marketplace. Social enterprises are taking off as a new operating model addressing acute societal challenges that have gained a global consensus through the UN SDGs. In parallel, while the impact investment market is growing at an average annual rate of 20%, hurdles still prevent it from becoming mainstream, including, the sourcing and evaluation of investment opportunities, transaction sizes, viable exit options, and impact measurement.
With the large and growing market of medium-sized social enterprises globally and their significant lack of access to financing, coupled with a strong and growing trend in impact investments, there lies an ideal opportunity for the SWISOX.
Geneva is singularly positioned to develop an international stock exchange specially dedicated to social enterprises. With a long humanitarian tradition recognized internationally, Geneva remains associated, in the minds of many people living abroad, as a city committed to humanitarian action. At the same time, Geneva has a stronghold in the global world of finance, as it remains one of the top financial centers in the world and an essential bastion of private wealth management. Thanks to the unique ecosystem that brings together international organizations, leading banks, the Lake Geneva region has been at the center of many innovations in sustainable finance in recent years and remains a world benchmark in terms of impact investing.
SWISOX will bring new innovations such as specialized social indices and new social finance analysis tools.
to remain at the heart of global innovation and strengthen its position as a leader in international sustainable finance.
SWISOX is building on the pioneering efforts of earlier attempts to create social financing exchanges-cum-platforms. SWISOX has distilled valuable lessons learned that will underpin its success.
Matching impact investors with the vetted and investable impact deals presents a significant opportunity for SWISOX to become a “one-stop shop” for all matters impact.
1. Located in Switzerland, a unique ecosystem combining the world’s largest center of wealth management with the epicenter of the UN SDGs;
2. Created as sub-segment within an existing regulated stock exchange, leveraging the infrastructure;
3. with a quantitative and standardized social impact scoring system to determine eligibility; and an
4. AI-powered feeder structure to identify the most promising issuers.
Six key proposals to position Switzerland as the world leader in Sustainable Finance
SFG and the Sustainability Forum Zurich (TSF), along with PwC, joined forces to publish the White Paper “Path to Sustainable Financial Centre Switzerland” aimed at presenting ways to sharpen Switzerland’s competitive positioning in sustainable finance. SFG translated the vision emanating from the White Paper into six actionable proposals for sustainable finance. One of these proposals was the creation of SWISOX.
Preliminary study
SFG published a preliminary study (in French) that explored the opportunity to create in Geneva an international stock exchange that would be entirely dedicated to social businesses. The study described the main business case behind creating such a stock exchange, the benefits it could bring to the sector and to Geneva, along with a general implementation framework.
Nomination of SWISOX – Bourse cantonale du développement durable
Funding secured from SNF for SWISOX feasibility study
SWISOX was selected, with 25 other pioneering projects, to be included in SNSF’s The National Research Programme “Sustainable Economy”(NRP 73) thereby securing funding from SNSF for the feasibility study.
Feasability study
This report, conducted by iGravity , aimed at validating, deepening, and precising the project. The key objectives included:
- Analyze, categorize and quantify the demand for an international social stock exchange;
- Review and evaluate existing solutions and determine potential market gaps that would be relevant for Switzerland to address;
- Detail what client segments and specific services should be proposed by SWISOX in order to address unmet demand and seize existing market opportunities; and
- Assess two different potential implementation scenarios.
Link to Full report and Executive Summary.
Project manager to set-up SWISOX
Thanks to the support from MAVA Foundation, SFG has been able to hire Zina Sanyoura to set up SWISOX.
PROGRESS UPDATE
Click to discover Swiss Social Stock Exchange in a snapshot
Learn about SwiSOX through this infograph explaining its goal and business case, what it means to the impact investing space, and what it learnt from previous attempts at creating social stock exchanges.
