Japan’s Dai-ichi Life Insurance is investing 5.5 billion yen (US$49.5 million) in a climate infrastructure fund managed by BlackRock Inc., raising the insurer’s total impact investments since 2017 to more than 13 billion yen.
The Climate Finance Partnership Fund primarily focuses on solar and wind power projects in emerging markets. It was launched on July 7 with an initial fundraising of $250 million. Other institutional investors in the fund include Standard Chartered Bank and Japan’s MUFG Bank.
Dai-ichi Life, which manages around 38 trillion yen of assets, says it has been promoting environmental, social and governance investments “with a focus on the themes of quality of life, regional revitalisation, and climate change”.
“The company will continue to actively engage in ESG investment to contribute to realising a sustainable society as well as improving its investment return through sophisticated and diverse investment methods,” the insurer says in a statement on July 9.
Dai-ichi Life is one of the most active impact investing players in Japan’s insurance industry. Including the BlackRock fund, it has invested 13.32 billion yen into 21 impact projects globally since entering the impact investment market in October 2017.
Overall, Japanese impact investment assets soared to 512.6 billion yen in 2020 from 33.7 billion yen in 2016, according to figures from the Global Steering Group for Impact Investment.
