Towards an Impact Performance Measurement Approach for Impact Investing: Results from a Benchmarking Study for Credit Finance - new publication by Rajna Gibson Brandon and Melita Leousi
Unlocking SDG-relevant capital depends on coherent and robust impact performance metrics that enable ex ante decision-making across investment options and ex post assessment of both forecasted and realized impact.
A new paper by Professor Rajna Gibson Brandon and Dr. Melita Leousi proposes a “synthetic” approach for measuring the impact performance of investments that can be adopted by impact investors and that complements standard impact reporting.
The authors identify five criteria relevant for impact performance measurement—intentionality, measurability, feasibility, incrementality, and comparability—and use them to benchmark a sample of 84 metrics developed by academics and practitioners in the credit finance sector, which attracts the largest volume of impact investments.
While over half of the metrics satisfy the criteria of intentionality, measurability, and feasibility—necessary for impact reporting—none meet all five, which are required for robust impact performance measurement. This highlights a significant gap between current practices and what is required to assess impact performance. Based on their findings, the authors propose a limited set of impact performance metrics suited to credit finance, underlined by a sector-specific theory of change. These metrics, and those that the authors plan to develop for other sectors, as well as for SDG themes like employment, gender, and climate, are essential to scale up the capital needed to meet the SDGs.
The paper "Towards an Impact Performance Measurement Approach for Impact Investing: Results from a Benchmarking Study for Credit Finance" is jointly co-authored with Dr. Camilo Mondragon-Velez.
It is forthcoming in the Special Issue of Sustainability on "Enhancing Decision-Making Processes for Achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Dec 7, 2025