Analysis: Future Returns: Why TPG’s Rise Fund Invests in Financial Inclusion
By Abby Schultz
One of the key themes for private-equity firm TPG’s impact-investing vehicle, the Rise Fund, is financial inclusion—which the firm bets is best addressed through technology.
Rise, which has closed two growth-oriented impact funds in excess of US$2 billion and was founded by U2 singer Bono and former eBay president, Jeff Skoll—in addition to TPG—invests for social and environmental impact. The San Francisco-based fund was attracted to tech-enabled financial inclusion because of the billions of people globally who are unbanked—roughly 1.5 billion pre-pandemic, according to Maya Chorengel, Rise’s co-managing partner.
While the number of unbanked had fallen steadily from as high as 3 billion a decade earlier, Covid has made life for those on the financial edge more precarious. In the U.S., pre-pandemic, the number of unbanked was roughly 35 million people, Chorengel says.
Photo courtesy of Edward Howell.
