I started talking to Chris Selth, ex super guru Bankers Trust fund manager, in 2020 when I was setting up the ImpaQt fund for early-stage ventures. We clicked especially after I discovered he spent many childhood years at eco-friendly South Stradbroke Island where I go most weekends to restore my soul.
We clicked on how to unlock capital for organisations to create value that solve the world’s burning problems of climate, health and social inequity. At Beckon it’s about SMEs and collaborative partnerships across sectors. We can work with organisations led by real changemakers, get them partnered, build vehicles that are investment ready and then attract the aligned capital to the vehicle so that good organisations can scale, solve problems and create value.
Together at Beckon, we understand that levers of value can be identified, prioritized, managed and measured. Whether we like it or not, nearly everything these days has a monetary value allocated. The Australian government value of your statistical life is currently $5.1m. We are getting better at valuing important things like nature, at-home care, carbon, diversity, wellbeing, employment and social cohesion. We can see the impact we are creating or destroying. Why do we use value as a measure? So that we can compare opportunities on an equal basis, and we can then allocate limited resources to the best things. The most fundamental principle is that value is based on forecasted cashflow. Emerging best-practice companies have integrated reporting which include nature, social and human capital measures and will be linked to strategy and purpose.
The organisations and collaborations of the future that we want to help will have long term sustainability themselves with high organisational value (read share price or investment valuation or member value) because they will have genuinely addressed stakeholder values like supplier transparency, environmental impact, community reputation and low employee turnover and created a long-term competitive position. The capability that we can facilitate will be with the Board, CEO and senior executive levels with value creation being core in the strategic plan and policies and standards in place to hold value to account.
It’s not just about having sustainability and ESG as a funds management risk assessment tick box led by the financial services industry. The ESG phenomenon could be a decoy for us all which may mean we take our eyes off the ball.
Investors are making decisions on value. Let’s help them understand value better to include social, environmental impacts and what the real drivers of value are.
We want a future thriving world that has halted climate change and solved social inequity and we need to understand value to do it.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lisa Siganto is on Beckon's Advisory Collective. Lisa is an impact advisor, impact investor, board director and philanthropist based in Brisbane. Lisa is a mother of 4 adult children, an accredited partnership broker and coach, and a value-based management specialist. She is currently a member of Brisbane Angels, the Impact club, Femeconomy and is a Coralus investor. She recently completed a course on Dementia.
