The Impact World this Week: 30 October 2025

UK: A pensions bill amendment aims to confirm that pension fund managers can legally consider how investments would affect their members’ living standards as well as the broader economy, society and the environment. The amendment to the Pension Schemes Bill, tabled by Labour MP Liam Byrne, is awaiting consideration by MPs during the report stage of the Bill which is currently in progress. The Impact Investing Institute claims that the current laws around fiduciary duty hold schemes back from directing capital towards investments such as clean energy infrastructure, housing, and financing for small businesses. Impact Investing Institute co-CEO Bella Landymore said the amendment would be a “breakthrough in unlocking pensions”.

Global: A South African startup developing an algae-based replacement for fossil fuels has won the ClimateLaunchpad competition, which helps early-stage climate startups turn their ideas into viable businesses. SeaH4’s product is made to be used as a sustainable, net-zero marine fuel. Coming second was Chaja, a Tanzanian company that provides affordable electric motorcycles, and OneFly, a Colombian biotech startup that converts organic waste into insect protein and fertiliser. The contest is run by Climate KIC – a ‘climate innovation agency’ which was launched by the EU’s European Institute of Innovation & Technology in 2010 – and supported by Bank of America and Irish Aid. The winners receive €10,000, €5,000 and 3,000 respectively, plus business support and investor access.

UK: Social enterprise healthcare providers are outperforming NHS averages on a number of metrics, according to Ahead of the Curve on Healthcare, new research by Social Enterprise UK, the King’s Fund and social care consultancy Baxendale. It found that 94% of health and social care social enterprises are rated at least ‘good’ on Care Quality Commission scores, compared with 78% of all NHS organisations. A survey of NHS staff shows that nearly 80% of staff in healthcare social enterprises say the care of patients is their organisation’s top priority, versus just half as the NHS average. The staff sickness absence rate is also substantially lower in social enterprises. The report finds that the 60 largest healthcare social enterprises deliver £2.4bn-worth of services each year, and the 15 largest employ nearly 12,000 people. Urgent healthcare is delivered to two-thirds of the population by social enterprise.

Africa: Four new social outcomes funds are expected to mobilise a combined  US$82m to improve access to education in Rwanda, Nigeria, South Africa, and Sierra Leone. Developed by the Education Outcomes Fund (EOF) and partners, the partnerships will bring together governments, philanthropic funders and impact investors. The partnerships will be rolled out across the four countries between October 2025 and January 2026. The first to launch in Rwanda aims to reach 25,000 children aged 3 to 5 years in 390 community-based early child development facilities across the country to improve school-readiness and child development. It will have a particular focus on inclusion for children with disabilities.

UK: Luxury home decor purveyor and B Corp House of Hackney celebrates successfully parting ways with its private equity shareholders in its 2025 impact report, allowing it to fully focus on becoming a “measurably regenerative company”. Its founders, husband and wife team Frieda Gormley and Javvy M Royle, write that the £3m buyback of the company marks “a new chapter” and they are looking forward to “an exciting new stage in our Nature-centred business greenprint development”. Private equity business Rockpool was bought out in part thanks to a public crowdfunding campaign with Triodos Bank which raised more than £800,000 in early 2025. The impact report also highlights how the business, which appointed ‘Mother Nature’ to its board in 2023, has begun to develop a ‘nature profit and loss statement’.

• Read more: Tree-huggers, board advisers, contract shapers: The lawyers leading the way for nature

UK: Jupiter, JP Morgan, Janus Henderson and Schroders are the first asset managers to join the dormant assets scheme since it opened last year to the investment and wealth management sector. They join more than 50 financial institutions already signed up. The voluntary scheme enables financial firms to make unclaimed assets available to invest in good causes, including social investment, youth, financial inclusion, and community wealth funds.

UK: Access, the Foundation for Social Investment, has received the government's final confirmation of the new £87.5m dormant assets allocation announced in June, and is now open to applications from social investors. As set out in the government’s dormant assets strategy in June, £12.5m is earmarked to support youth-focused organisations, and £12m will go to the Pathway Fund. The rest will be invested in social investment intermediaries over a four-year period, and follow the recommendations of the Community Enterprise Growth Plan, a set of proposals aimed at maximising the impact of dormant asset funding in left-behind communities put forward by a broad coalition of social investment and social enterprise organisations.

• Read more: £12m boost to diverse-led social enterprises in new UK dormant assets strategy

Movers and Shakers

• Sarah Pearson is now honorary chair of the Orange Movement, a global initiative led by Singapore-based Impact Investment Exchange (IIX) that aims to unlock capital for women and advance gender equality. Pearson was previously chief scientist and chief innovation officer at Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
• Gurmeet Kaur joins Sumerian Foundation as its head of investment advisory. Kaur set up and ran the first impact investment portfolio at British International Investment in 2012, and more recently led impact investing advisory work at New Philanthropy Capital.
  Read more from Gurmeet Kaur: Opinion: Impact investing needs more transparency – before it becomes the next big scandal
• Unity Trust Bank has named Catherine Douglas as its chief customer officer, in charge of delivering its five-year commercial growth strategy. Douglas previously worked with Santander, TSB and the Co-operative Bank.

In case you missed it

UK: The Business Leaders for Peace campaign delivered a letter this month to Number 10 Downing Street calling for the UK government to end atrocities in Gaza. The letter, signed by 1,200 business leaders and founders including Unilever CEO Paul Polman, social entrepreneur Camilla Marcus-Dew, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s Erinch Sahan and On Purpose CEO Tom Rippin, was originally published in June and gathered hundreds more signatories since. In particular, it calls for the UK to ensure unhindered humanitarian access to the enclave, suspend arms transfers to Israel and back international accountability.
(Photo by Jonathan Perugia)

• Read more: ‘End complicity in Gaza genocide’, more than 1,000 business leaders tell UK government