INSIGHTS

Quona Achieves Advanced Impact Verification from BlueMark

By Kristin Sadler

Quona just completed its second successful impact verification process with BlueMark, a leading independent impact verification provider. We’re proud to share that Quona has achieved the highest possible (“advanced”) score on 7 of the 8 principles measured, and scored in the top quartile of BlueMark’s benchmark for these principles — a significant milestone!

Quona Capital was founded with a mission to transform the financial services industry to make it more inclusive, more technology-driven, and more impactful through investments in innovative financial technology companies. Impact — and its measurement — has always been core to Quona’s mission, and we’re proud to have played a key role in the growth and evolution of the impact industry overall.

Quona was an early signatory to the Operating Principles for Impact Management (the Impact Principles), a standard adopted by 180+ leading global impact investors — inclusive of asset owners and asset allocators across all asset classes — collectively managing over $515 billion. As a signatory, we completed our first impact verification against the Impact Principles with BlueMark back in 2021. This initial verification process underscored the robustness of Quona’s theory of change and impact management systems while identifying opportunities for enhancement in systematizing our approach.

By late 2023, BlueMark had completed over 100 independent impact verifications, establishing a benchmark for best practices in impact management. This benchmarking underscores the importance of the ratings that Quona received this time around (7 out of 8 “advanced” scores), which were not only a meaningful improvement over our 2021 verification ratings, but also a significant achievement considering Quona’s scale relative to other signatories, many of which have far larger teams and AUMs 10x the size of Quona!

Some of the major impact system upgrades implemented that helped Quona to “punch above our weight” and outperform BlueMark’s median ratings include:

• Building and integrating Impact Scorecards to systematically and categorically assess current and potential impact in line with Quona’s impact measurement framework. Impact scorecards are developed to assess impact for all new and follow-on investments, and are updated annually for all companies.
• Completion of our Annual Portfolio Impact Performance Review process leveraging categorial impact scorecard data to provide a firm and fund-wide snapshot of impact performance in line with the “ABCs of Impact.”
• Incorporation of outcome-level impact data directly from stakeholders for a subset of portfolio companies through customer insights projects with 60 Decibels. The impact data points from these projects (for example, the % of customers reporting quality of life improvements) strengthened Quona’s ability to assess and corroborate impact performance.

We are delighted with the advanced ratings from BlueMark, and we’re just getting started. We remain committed to supporting further evolution for the impact industry. As we continue to grow both Quona’s AUM and our systems for driving impact, we look forward to reporting more on this important topic in the months and years to come!

Want to learn more about Quona’s commitment to impact? Check out the Impact section of our website, or download our most recent Impact Report for further details!