There is a fundamental shift taking place in the investment world that will change the financial markets, says Edwin Backes, the chairman of PYM. "We founded PYM to help accelerate the transition to responsible and impact investing in the Benelux."

"The hockey stick growth curve is taking off," says Edwin Backes, chairman of PYM, the community of conscious investors, without any doubt. "The undercurrent in the financial markets is changing."

"For a long time, impact investing was somewhat of a romantic idea, but investing will fundamentally change. Ultimately, sustainable investing will become the norm. That is the conclusion after attending many impact investment conferences and conversations with private bankers," says Edwin.

"This strengthens my conviction that this is a perfect moment to launch PYM and that we really need to seize the momentum of the rapidly growing interest in impact and sustainable investing. A private banker recently told me that just three years ago, 90% of his clients were not interested in sustainable and impact investing. Now, 50% of his clients want to know more about it. There is a huge mental shift taking place."

From the Impact Days conference to the independent PYM foundation
The founders of PYM were the driving forces behind organizing the last Impact Days conference, which was previously the main annual event of Pymwymic, the Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is Community. 

"It was unintended, but while we were preparing this conference, we realized that despite efforts to grow the number of impact investors over many years, the number of impact investors remained more or less the same—around two hundred," says Edwin. "We wondered how we could grow the community of impact investors in the Benelux."

"Pymwymic developed into an impact fund and in our vision, you need an independent organization to be able to grow quickly. And that is our ambition," he says. There are 115,000 wealth owners in the Netherlands who have at least €3 million in investable assets. "We need to be able to reach and inspire many more of them to invest consciously."

The community to collaborate with in new ways 
One of the ways PYM plans to grow quickly is by collaborating with leading impact funds and wealth managers. Through each advisor, PYM can reach 30 to 100 families. "We are reversing the relationship with wealth advisors, some of whom are our Trusted Partners. We ask what we, as wealth owners, can do for them."

How? For example, he says, we can have sessions with them to share our experience and lessons learned to grow their understanding of impact investing, or we can meet a client with them to illustrate with our stories from the field what impact investing really is. "We are a community of wealth owners with the intention to invest for good."

Accelerating your impact investing journey
It was a young entrepreneur in his twenties who steered him towards impact investing about six years ago. Edwin recalls him saying: "Your baby boomer generation has 'destroyed' the planet and now my generation can fix it." 

"It took me a few years to find my way, to understand the possibilities and who does what. We want to accelerate that journey for starting impact investors to two months. We have a growing team of Trusted Peers, who are experienced investors with specific expertise. New members of our community can talk to them and meet other investors at our events. Our team has knowledge and a network within the sector, so we can connect them with the right people and organizations."

Just before this interview, he listened to another webinar, about impact measurement. "Harmonization of the many different methods will be a real gamechanger," says Edwin. He attends at least one or two impact investing events per week. Some of his fellow board and team members participate in even more conferences weekly. 

Unique approach
There is an abundance of conferences and content about impact investing. PYM does not want to reinvent the wheel and also does not want to promote certain investments. "There is no comparable organization in the Benelux," says Edwin. "We are independent—that's why we are a foundation. We have no investment agenda. We want to inspire wealth owners and PYM wants to be a guiding light in people's journey to becoming a conscious investor."