Impact Bonds Selected Milestones 

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The above figure shares selected milestone for Impact Bonds. The first social impact bond was implemented in Peterborough in United Kingdom. Social Finance launched the first social impact bond with a capital of £5 million raised from trusts and foundations to reduce reoffending rates among prisoners whose prison sentences were less than a year in the Peterborough prison. This experiment conducted a randomised controlled trial to analyse the result of the intervention implemented by the social impact bond. The results were impressive with a success of reducing reoffending rate by 9 percent. 

Impact Bonds Selected Milestones

The first development impact bond was implemented in India. Educate Girls successfully completed the project. Over the past decade, various thematic bonds focusing on education and healthcare have emerged. Development Impact Bonds are implemented in low- and medium-income countries. Unlike a government entity for a social development bond, the outcome payer is a third-party example of a donor.

Video | The middle Road 

Source: Brookings: What is the size and the scope of impact bond market?  July 2020 | The middle Road 

International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) launched the first Humanitarian Impact Bond for people with disabilities in Mali (Mopti), Nigeria (Maiduguri), and the Democratic Republic of Congo (Kinshasa). La Caixa Foundation and governments of Belgium, Italy, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland are funding the outcomes. The Government of the Netherlands provided upfront grant finance for designing the bond. The service provider International Committee of the Red Cross (Physical Rehabilitation Programme), would use the upfront capital to increase the efficiency of Physical Rehabilitation Program Centers and support at least 3600 disabled people to regain mobility. Structured as an impact bond, the Wildlife Conservation Bond, and WCB moniker Rhino Bond focuses on outcome-driven payment. It works like a development impact bond with the outcome payer, a non-government entity. The innovative financial instrument is part of blended finance to drive private capital for wildlife conservation and protection, focusing on protecting black rhinos in South Africa and supporting local communities. The bond proceeds’ vital purpose is to increase the final rhino population growth rate with the Global Environment Facility, the largest trust-based multilateral fund investing in nature, as the outcome payer. The Wildlife Conservation Bond, a collaborative instrument, involves multiple actors through the public-private partnership model to enhance funding for conserving, preserving, and improving wildlife and the biodiversity ecosystem. These partnerships are essential in co-financing to enhance private capital within the development sector. Read The middle Road publication about these bonds here. 

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The Cameroon Cataract Fund launched in March 2018 is an example of an innovative development impact bond launched to fund cataract surgeries among low-income patients in the sub-Saharan region. The pay for performance loan is developed by the Cataract Bond Design Coalition, a collaboration between Outcome Funders – The Fred Hollows Foundation, Conrad N Hilton Foundation, and Sightsavers, Volta Capital as the bond manager, and the African Eye Foundation. Magrabi ICO Cameroon Eye Institute (MICEI) is African Eye Foundation’s flagship project, the first subspecialty eye care hospital and training institute in Central Asia. The outcome funders and service provider share the risk for driving the intervention with a full capital guarantee to the investors. AEDES is the impact evaluator.  

$2 million of capital was raised from the investors on top of $10 million already invested in the project. MICEI follows a business model similar to Arvind Eye Care, it subsidies costs of low-income patients and charges middle-income patients higher market-driven rates for performing surgeries. This read refers to the case study produced as part of an evaluation of the Cameroon Cataract Bond and the DFID DIBs pilot program, commissioned by the Fred Hollows Foundation and the Department for International Development and undertaken by Ecorys UK, written by Alma Agusti Strid at Ecorys. More on the bond as we progress. 

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