In Impact Investing, Better Measurement Means Better Impact, Better Returns

By Joel Anderson

In general, investing has always been defined by the supposedly quantifiable. Balance sheets, income statements, and, most of all, returns. However, even within the world of quantifiable, things can still get pretty murky. Particularly within the world of expansive portfolios crammed with a variety of asset types, many of which are in non-traditional classes, it can be difficult for funds to know exactly what they own and exactly how it’s doing. That’s where the software company Addepar comes in.

“The mission of Addepar is to power the global financial system to efficiently allocate capital and mitigate risk,” says Daniel Bookstaber, COO. “That’s a pretty ambitious mission. The whole theory with Addepar is that you have massive pools of capital, about $77 trillion of ultra-high net worth and high net worth assets in the US, and they are increasingly invested in the very complex portfolios. They are multi-asset class, multi-custodian, multi-currency, and there isn’t really good technology out there to help the owner of those portfolios understand what they own and how it’s performing.”

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